Author Archives: Reid Mukai

American State Propaganda: A Thought Experiment

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In a tyrannical dictatorship, the press is operated by employees of the government. In a Free Democracy™️, the press is operated by employees of the oligarchs who operate the government.

By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com.au

The New York Times has published another CIA press release disguised as news, this time aimed at whipping up paranoia toward anyone who criticizes the US proxy war in Ukraine.

The article is titled “Putin’s Next Target: U.S. Support for Ukraine, Officials Say”. Its author, Julian E Barnes, has written so many New York Times articles with headlines ending in the words “Officials Say” that we can safely assume the primary reason for his continued employment in that paper is because empire managers within the US government have designated him someone who can be trusted to print what they want printed. This designation would make him a reliable supplier of “scoops” (read: regurgitations of unevidenced government claims) for The New York Times.

“American officials said they are convinced that Mr. Putin intends to try to end U.S. and European support for Ukraine by using his spy agencies to push propaganda supporting pro-Russian political parties and by stoking conspiracy theories with new technologies,” Barnes writes.

Of course the report never gets any more specific than that, and of course the “American officials” Barnes cites promote their unevidenced assertions under cover of complete anonymity.

“The American officials spoke on the condition their names not be reported so they could discuss sensitive intelligence,” Barnes writes.

The only named source cited in the article is a CIA veteran named Beth Sanner, who says that “Russia will not give up on disinformation campaigns,” but adds that “we don’t know what it is going to look like.”

And that’s really the whole article right there. Putin is going to be using his spy agencies to promote political parties and messages which support ending the practice of pouring billions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine, but nobody knows what that will look like exactly, so we all have to just be sort of generally distrustful toward anyone who doesn’t think it’s a swell idea to perpetuate a horrific war with potentially world-ending consequences, because they might be part of an unspecified Russian influence operation.

We saw a similar report from CNN a few weeks ago, in which the public was warned that Russia’s FSB is working to convert westerners into mouthpieces for Russian propaganda using methods so sneaky and subtle that those westerners wouldn’t even know it’s happening. Again, details were extremely vague and the only obvious response to the information provided is for everyone to just get really paranoid toward anyone saying anything that doesn’t support current US foreign policy toward Russia.

As a thought experiment, imagine what it would look like if the CIA or some other agency wanted to advance US information interests by making the public distrustful of any people or information which go against US strategic objectives. Try to imagine some of the things they might say or do. 

Do you imagine it would look much different than what we’re seeing currently? Feeding trusted mainstream news reporters extremely vague stories about the Kremlin trying to deceive people into opposing the longstanding agendas of the US intelligence cartel, using online media and social subversion? Can you think of a more effective way to help shore up trust in your preferred narratives and sow distrust in narratives you do not prefer?

Here’s another one: imagine a state media outlet for a tyrannical dictatorship. Think about how its news stories are made, how it would often take orders from the government on what to report and what not to report, and how all its printing or broadcasting would always align with the information interests of that government.

Now ask yourself: in what material way is that reporting different from these CIA press releases we’re seeing from outlets like The New York Times and CNN? In both scenarios the government is feeding the media information it wants printed, and in both scenarios there will be consequences if the media don’t obey. In our hypothetical dictatorship those consequences might be more severe, but in our real life scenario the consequences are no less real. 

If Mr Barnes had refused to work on this story, he would have lost his “scoop” and it would have been given to someone else, perhaps at a competing outlet. If Barnes ceased uncritically reporting unevidenced assertions from anonymous government officials, his prominence in the mainstream media would quickly fizzle, and his career would dry up. If The New York Times ceased functioning as a reliable outlet for the credulous printing of unevidenced government claims, then the government agencies who’ve been elevating the paper to prominence with their artificial “scoops” can take those hot stories to another competing outlet and let them get the subscriptions and the glory.

In both scenarios, the government is able to get its propaganda messaging printed as hard news reporting. In one scenario the reporter reports what the government wants because they work for the government, in the other scenario the reporter reports what the government wants because that’s the only way to have a career in media outlets that are owned and controlled by the plutocrats who benefit from the political status quo the government is premised upon. The only major difference is that in our hypothetical dictatorship, the public probably knows it’s being fed propaganda, and is therefore more likely to take what they’re being told with a grain of salt.

In a tyrannical dictatorship, the press is operated by employees of the government. In a Free Democracy™️, the press is operated by employees of the oligarchs who operate the government. In both cases you’re getting state propaganda, but in one of them the propaganda is disguised as objective news reporting.

Saturday Matinee: The Occupation of the American Mind

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Source: Media Education Foundation

“The Occupation of the American Mind” has been repeatedly attacked and misrepresented by right-wing pressure groups and outright ignored by virtually all mainstream media outlets and North American film festivals.   

To help bring context to U.S. corporate media coverage of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and Israel’s escalating bombardment of Gaza, we’re releasing this newly abridged, 49-minute version of our 2016 film “The Occupation of the American Mind.” The film places special emphasis on propaganda efforts designed to conceal Israel’s brutal and illegal decades-long occupation of Palestinian land as a root cause of the conflict, and to cast those who speak up for Palestinian human rights as either anti-Semitic or terrorist-sympathizers. Narrated by Roger Waters, and featuring Noam Chomsky, Rashid Khalidi, Yousef Munayyer, Amira Hass, Norman Finkelstein, Phyllis Bennis, Rula Jebreal, Norman Solomon, Max Blumenthal, Rami Khouri, M.J. Rosenberg, Stephen J. Walt, Mark Crispin Miller, Peter Hart, Henry Siegman, and Sut Jhally.

A transcript of this 49 minute version to follow along with is available by going to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jKRwdsq-As

49 MINUTE VERSION (The restriction is because of violent scenes.)

“The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel’s Public Relations War in the United States.” Despite receiving an overwhelmingly positive response from those who have actually seen it,” The Occupation of the American Mind” has been repeatedly attacked and misrepresented by right-wing pressure groups and outright ignored by virtually all mainstream media outlets and North American film festivals. To bypass this campaign of misrepresentation and suppression, we’ve decided to make the film available for FREE online so that people can make up their own minds about its analysis of U.S. media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Please watch and share widely! Support for the free distribution of this film was provided by the Wallace Action Fund of Tides Foundation, advised by Randall Wallace. If you’d like to help support the effort to provide free distribution of The Occupation of the American Mind, please consider a donation. https://www.mediaed.org/donate/

Exposing Truth And Lies In Gaza

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An analysis and collection of articles elaborating the reality of Israel’s ethnic cleansing in Gaza

By Don Via Jr.

Source: The Free Thought Project

Ever since the outset of Israel’s genocidal onslaught against Gaza approximately one month ago corporate media has been awash with perspectives sympathetic to the Zionist cause. In fashion typical of the news media establishment parroting the talking points of the military industrial complex, acting as stenographers regurgitating pro war propaganda and maintaining the status quo of the western unipolar hegemony. With complete disregard to historical context, logical consistency, or pesky facts.

In layman’s terms, inverting the reality of the ongoing conflict to fit the agenda of imperialist psychopaths as per usual.

Rehashing much of the same talking points utilized at the outset of the US/ NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Ukraine good; Russia bad… Just swap out the blue and yellow profile pic flag emoji with the Star of David, rinse, and repeat. Israel good; Palestine bad. They’ve even managed to trudge up some of the old rhetoric from the George W Bush regime to once again help sell the wholesale slaughter of innocent civilians. “There is no room for neutrality”. “You are either with us or you are with the terrorists”. George Bush in 2001 or Lior Hayat in 2023, what’s the difference? Either way the result is a 7000 pound bomb paid for with US taxpayer dollars dismembering Arab children for the crime of being born the wrong color in the wrong region.

Yet in this inverted reality that they facilitate where weapons manufacturers continue to make a killing off of senseless killing somehow the moral fabric of our society has deteriorated so far, our apathy so exorbitant, that it is actually a point of contention whether or not it is ethical to carpet bomb a concentration camp full of kids.

Of course the sad reality is this is nothing new when it comes to the nature of American exceptionalism, or the indifference of many around the world as a whole. Whether it be turning a blind eye to the carpet bombing of children in Gaza today, or those in Iraq twenty years ago, or the instantaneous incineration of whole cities á la Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or even casual dismissal of the mass genocide of over one hundred million indigenous peoples that precipitated the founding of our empire over two centuries ago. So long as people can be lulled into the comfortable ignorance of being insulated from the real world consequences of their governments actions, all is well.

This is partially the consequence of a civilization indoctrinated, psychologically subdued as casualties in the ever intensifying information war. Completely desensitized from the horrific monstrosity that is warfare; the obliteration of our fellow humans, particularly grizzly under the circumstances of false pretenses as established by neocolonialist ambitions.

Keep them dissociated with bread and circus while pundits promulgate empty talking points like it were a football game and let them keep pretending as if their impassivity doesn’t beget atrocity. Meanwhile Israeli officials continue to openly espouse the desire to wipe every Palestinian off the map, man, woman, and child, up to and including with the use of nuclear bombs in an effort to conquer the enclave.

Up to this point upwards of 9,000 civilians have been killed, over half of which are women and children. According to UNICEF Gaza has essentially become a child graveyard.

The sheer unbridled brutality has reached such a scale that even some who are typically in lockstep with the status quo of the war machine have spoken in opposition against it. Even CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and the UK’s Piers Morgan, both notorious war apologists in their own right, have shown brief glimpses of empathy in the face of Israel’s brazen mass murder of innocents.

Despite this there are still those, politicians, pundits, and regular people alike, seemingly divorced from their humanity encouraging this ruthless slaughter to continue. There is still no shortage of propaganda pieces deliberately disseminating misinformation to the average reader in an attempt to sway their sympathies in favor of the occupying apartheid colony.

Most common sense individuals by now understand that western media reporting on foreign policy has about as much reliability as a serial rapist put in charge of safeguarding a battered women’s shelter. Yes, that analogy is crude. But far from being an exaggeration.

So amidst this corporate deluge of disinformation I saw it fit to compose a compilation of essential reporting on the subject matter to help readers grasp a better understanding of the reality of the conflict. The following is an assortment of articles delineating those pertinent facts.

The final piece mentioned in that listing should be read after all else and considered with particular import. It is okay to admit when we are wrong about things. We live in a time when topics have become so overly polarized, positions so deeply tribal, that the mere concept of considering an opposing perspective, much less coming to the acceptance that perhaps we don’t know everything is literally repulsive to many. That is a behavior that we have to unlearn.

Life is about growing, our learning as a thinking species never ceases. Especially when our institutions of learning and education are so hopelessly co-opted to perpetuate the kind of thinking distinctly designed to benefit the ruling class, it is our responsibility to come to terms with the fact that often the notions that were instilled in us as facts were in actuality carefully curated half-truths, and sometimes even blatant lies, intended to manipulate our opinion on a subject and craft a worldview that doesn’t fall out of line with the status quo. It is our responsibility to unlearn the fallacies, so that we can begin to learn the truth.

Truth and liberty go hand in hand. One cannot exist without the other. If one claims to be an advocate of truth they must then in turn also become an advocate of liberty, and vice versa. Liberty is not selective, it is universal. It is an irreconcilable inconsistency to advocate for the liberty of some but not others. Frankly put you are either for the freedom of all people, or you are not for freedom. That includes the Palestinian people; the native Arab inhabitants of a strip of land that has been under illegal occupation and subjugation for more than a century. If you care about truth that is a fact that simply cannot be ignored. If you advocate liberty, it must include the liberation of Palestine.

“Drop a Nuclear Bomb on Gaza”: Israeli Minister Says Using Nukes on Gaza an Option

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By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

Amichai Eliyahu, an Israeli Heritage Minister has admitted to the world that Israel has nuclear weapons ready to be used on the Palestinians.  The Times of Israel reported that “Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said Sunday that one of Israel’s options in the war against Hamas was to drop a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip, in comments that were quickly disavowed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also suspended the minister from cabinet meetings.” 

Surely, Netanyahu is angry with Eliyahu’s comments since the Israeli government never confirmed nor denied that they have nuclear weapons, so Eliyahu got himself suspended.

Eliyahu was asked in an interview with Radio Kol Berama “whether an atomic bomb should be dropped on the enclave” and he responded with “This is one of the possibilities.”

Eliyahu is a far-right politician who rejects humanitarian aid into Gaza by saying that “we wouldn’t hand the Nazis humanitarian aid,” and that “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza.”  He also advocates efforts to retake the Gaza Strip and rebuild Israeli settlements before his government decided to unilaterally withdrew in 2005. Eliyahu was also asked about what would happen to the Palestinian population in the aftermath and he said that “They can go to Ireland or deserts; the monsters in Gaza should find a solution by themselves.”

Whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, a Moroccan-born Israeli citizen, a former nuclear technician exposed Israel’s nuclear weapons factory located in the Negev Desert, not far from the city of Dimona to The Sunday Times of London in 1986.  Vanunu was drugged and kidnapped by Mossad agents while in Rome and spent more than 11 years out of 18-year prison sentence in solitary confinement in an Israeli prison.

In 2005, The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) published ‘The Release of Mordechai Vanunu and U.S. Complicity in the Development of Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal’ which revealed an important fact that Vanunu’s revelations about how Israel’s nuclear program is “offensive in nature”:

A former strategic analyst at the Rand Corporation observed that Vanunu’s revelations about Israel ’s nuclear program demonstrated that: “Its scale and nature was clearly designed for threatening and if necessary, launching first-use of nuclear weapons against conventional forces.” Prior to Vanunu’s revelations, many suspected that Israel ’s nuclear program was limited to tactical nuclear artillery and naval shells

Mordechai Vanunu exposed Israel’s nuclear weapons program so he is considered a traitor but to Vanunu’s own observation, he sees it differently, “Five million Jews are regarding me as a traitor, but six billion people around the world think me as a hero and a good man who bring the message to all the human beings that we should survive and prevent the use of nuclear weapons and to prevent the nuclear preparations and to prevent nuclear war in the future.” 

Israel says that Iran is building a nuclear weapons program which Tehran has repeatedly denied, but it is Israel who has been exposed for having an arsenal of nuclear weapons ready to be used against the Muslim world. 

The Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Seymour M. Hersch wrote, ‘The Sampson Option; Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and America’s Foreign Policy’ and concluded that “America’s policy toward the Israeli arsenal, as we have seen in this book, was not just one of benign neglect: it was a conscious policy of ignoring reality.”   Hersch warned about Israel’s nuclear capabilities including the production of low-yield neutron warheads to exporting nuclear technology:

By the mid-1980s, the technicians at Dimona had manufactured hundreds of low-yield neutron warheads capable of destroying large numbers of enemy troops with minimal property damage. The size and sophistication of Israel’s arsenal allows men such as Ariel Sharon to dream of redrawing the map of the Middle East aided by the implicit threat of nuclear force. Israel also has been an exporter of nuclear technology and has collaborated on nuclear weapons research with other nations, including South Africa.

In September 1988, Israel launched its first satellite into orbit, bringing it a huge step closer to intercontinental missiles and a satellite intelligence capability—no more Jonathan Pollards would be needed to steal America’s secrets. Scientists at Z Division concluded that the rocket booster that launched the Israeli satellite produced enough thrust to deliver a small nuclear war- head to a target more than six thousand miles away.  Israeli physicists are still at the cutting edge in weapons technology and involved, as are their American and Soviet counterparts, in intensive research into nuclear bomb-pumped X-ray lasers, hydrodynamics, and radiation transport—the next generation of weaponry.

None of this has ever been discussed in the open in Israel, or in the Knesset. Meanwhile, Israeli field commanders have accepted nuclear artillery shells and land mines as battlefield necessities: another means to an end

So, would the Israelis be willing to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran? There is no doubt that Russia and other world powers including China would not allow Israel to hit Iran with a nuclear bomb.  

If Israel decided to use a nuclear weapon anywhere in the Middle East, it would unite all Muslims against Israel and that is something Tel Aviv and Washington is not prepared for.      

Hersch concluded that “the basic target of Israel’s nuclear arsenal has been and will continue to be its Arab neighbors. Should war break out in the Middle East again and should the Syrians and the Egyptians break through again as they did in 1973 or should any Arab nation fire missiles again at Israel, as Iraq did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong probability. Never again. The Samson Option is no longer the only nuclear option available to Israel.” 

Will the Hamas-Israel Conflict Spin Out of Control?

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By Paul Craig Roberts

Source: PaulCraigRoberts.org

According to Iran’s PressTV, the Iranian defense minister announced that the US “will be hit hard” it Israel’s war on Gaza does not halt.  It is unclear why the defense minister’s target is the US and not Israel.  By US he probably means US bases in Syria and Iraq.  

Add this puzzle to the growing collection.  For example, if Iran and Hezbollah are behind Hamas’ October 7 attack, why wasn’t Hamas provided with air defense capability against what everyone had to know would be massive Israeli bombing of Gaza?  Why did Russia provide Syria with the S-300 air defense system and prevent Syria from using it against Israeli and US aircraft that attack Syrian territory?

I explained that the October 7 attack on Israel has the Biden regime’s neoconservatives and Netanyahu’s fingers all over it–https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/10/30/the-israeli-hamas-conflict-is-a-continuation-of-the-9-11-plot/ .  It is not only Palestine that is Netanhayu’s goal, but also Greater Israel which runs according to Zionists from the Nile to the Euphrates. The intent is to draw into the conflict Iran and Syria so that the neoconservatives can reopen the wars in the Middle East against Hezbollah’s suppliers.  Without weapons and money from Iran and Syria, Hezbollah would not be able to prevent Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon. I doubt that Biden understands this.  Most likely the neoconservatives in the government told him that having a strong US military presence on the scene would keep things from getting out of hand. Many Americans think that the president knows everything and is in control, but the fact is that he only knows what his officials tell him, and the neoconservatives have their own agenda.

That the intent is to widen the conflict is supported by the enormous quantities of weapons, troops and air power that the US is assembling in the area. This concentration supplemented with German and French troops, according to media reports, go far beyond what is needed to subdue Hamas.  The official explanation for this concentration of Western military resources is to protect Israel from Hezbollah and Iran.  Adding to the collection of puzzles, if Israel is so vulnerable from attacking Gaza, why would Israel risk it.  It makes no sense to risk defeat for the sake of revenge.  Israel must have known in advance that US forces would instantly be on the scene.  How did Israel know that if October 7 was a surprise?

Putin and it seems Biden have realized that if Iran and Hezbollah are enticed into the conflict a wider regional conflict will emerge that could result in World War III.  Putin has been restraining the Muslims and Biden has tried to restrain Netanyahu. If Putin succeeds, the neoconservatives and Netanyahu will likely initiate a false flag attack on Israel and blame Hezbollah, and the neoconservatives who run the Biden regime will use the false flag attack to widen the war.

Certainly Americans and Europeans are getting no help from their governments or media in understanding that Putin is doing his best to save them from a world war.  Instead, hate continues to pour out against Putin.  

Putin cannot prevent a false flag attack.  By performing the statesman’s role while the other side agitates for war, Putin is repeating his mistake with the Minsk Agreement.  He held to his hopes for this agreement despite clear evidence that the US and NATO were building a massive Ukrainian army to subdue the two break-away Donbas republics.  The result was a costly war.  Now by restraining the Muslims, Putin is denying Muslims the initiative and handing the initiative to the US neoconservatives and Netanyahu.  It is a paradox that by doing the right thing Putin is likely contributing to the widening of the conflict. 

As Western governments and media are focused solely on Hamas’ atrocities, no one can think clearly about what is really going on.  Republicans and some Christian evangelicals find themselves in company with neoconservatives demanding war.  Protesters in Europe against Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of civilians are branded anti-semitic and domestic terrorists.  ( See: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2023/11/05/tyranny-now-rules-in-great-britain/ ) In the US even Jewish protesters against Israel’s war crimes are called anti-semitic “self-hating Jews.”  

It seems no reasonable humane voice can find a hearing.  In other words, there is no constraint on the conflict spinning out of control. 

Fauci and the CIA: A New Explanation Emerges

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By Jeffrey Tucker

Source: Brownstone Institute

Jeremy Farrar’s book from August 2021 is relatively more candid than most accounts of the initial decision to lock down in the US and UK. “It’s hard to come off nocturnal calls about the possibility of a lab leak and go back to bed,” he wrote of the clandestine phone calls he was getting from January 27-31, 2020. They had already alerted the FBI and MI5. 

“I’d never had trouble sleeping before, something that comes from spending a career working as a doctor in critical care and medicine. But the situation with this new virus and the dark question marks over its origins felt emotionally overwhelming. None of us knew what was going to happen but things had already escalated into an international emergency. On top of that, just a few of us – Eddie [Holmes], Kristian [Anderson], Tony [Fauci] and I – were now privy to sensitive information that, if proved to be true, might set off a whole series of events that would be far bigger than any of us. It felt as if a storm was gathering, of forces beyond anything I had experienced and over which none of us had any control.”

At that point in the trajectory of events, intelligence services on both sides of the Atlantic had been put on notice. Anthony Fauci also received confirmation that money from the National Institutes of Health had been channeled to the offending lab in Wuhan, which meant that his career was on the line. Working at a furious pace, the famed “Proximal Origin” paper was produced in record time. It concluded that there was no lab leak. 

In a remarkable series of revelations this week, we’ve learned that the CIA was involved in trying to make payments to those authors (thank you whistleblower), plus it appears that Fauci made visits to the CIA’s headquarters, most likely around the same time. 

Suddenly we get some possible clarity in what has otherwise been a very blurry picture. The anomaly that has heretofore cried out for explanation is how it is that Fauci changed his mind so dramatically and precisely on the merit of lockdowns for the virus. One day he was counseling calm because this was flu-like, and the next day he was drumming up awareness of the coming lockdown. That day was February 27, 2020, the same day that the New York Times joined with alarmist propaganda from its lead virus reporter Donald G. McNeil. 

On February 26, Fauci was writing: “Do not let the fear of the unknown… distort your evaluation of the risk of the pandemic to you relative to the risks that you face every day… do not yield to unreasonable fear.”

The next day, February 27, Fauci wrote actress Morgan Fairchild – likely the most high-profile influencer he knew from the firmament – that “be prepared to mitigate an outbreak in this country by measures that include social distancing, teleworking, temporary closure of schools, etc.”

To be sure, twenty-plus days had passed between the time Fauci alerted intelligence and when he decided to become the voice for lockdowns. We don’t know the exact date of the meetings with the CIA. But generally until now, most of February 2020 has been a blur in terms of the timeline. Something was going on but we hadn’t known just what. 

Let’s distinguish between a proximate and distal cause of the lockdowns.

The proximate cause is the fear of a lab leak and an aping of the Wuhan strategy of keeping everyone in their homes to stop the spread. They might have believed this would work, based on the legend of how SARS-1 was controlled. The CIA had dealings with Wuhan and so did Fauci. They both had an interest in denying the lab leak and stopping the spread. The WHO gave them cover. 

The distal reasons are more complicated. What stands out here is the possibility of a quid pro quo. The CIA pays scientists to say there was no lab leak and otherwise instructs its kept media sources (New York Times) to call the lab leak a conspiracy theory of the far right. Every measure would be deployed to keep Fauci off the hot seat for his funding of the Wuhan lab. But this cooperation would need to come at a price. Fauci would need to participate in a real-life version of the germ games (Event 201 and Crimson Contagion). 

It would be the biggest role of Fauci’s long career. He would need to throw out his principles and medical knowledge of, for example, natural immunity and standard epidemiology concerning the spread of viruses and mitigation strategies. The old pandemic playbook would need to be shredded in favor of lockdown theory as invented in 2005 and then tried in Wuhan. The WHO could be relied upon to say that this strategy worked. 

Fauci would need to be on TV daily to somehow persuade Americans to give up their precious rights and liberties. This would need to go on for a long time, maybe all the way to the election, however implausible this sounds. He would need to push the vaccine for which he had already made a deal with Moderna in late January. 

Above all else, he would need to convince Trump to go along. That was the hardest part. They considered Trump’s weaknesses. He was a germaphobe so that’s good. He hated Chinese imports so it was merely a matter of describing the virus this way. But he also has a well-known weakness for deferring to highly competent and articulate professional women. That’s where the highly reliable Deborah Birx comes in: Fauci would be her wingman to convince Trump to green-light the lockdowns. 

What does the CIA get out of this? The vast intelligence community would have to be put in charge of the pandemic response as the rule maker, the lead agency. Its outposts such as CISA would handle labor-related issues and use its contacts in social media to curate the public mind. This would allow the intelligence community finally to crack down on information flows that had begun 20 years earlier that they had heretofore failed to manage. 

The CIA would hobble and hamstring the US president, whom they hated. And importantly, there was his China problem. He had wrecked relations through his tariff wars. So far as they were concerned, this was treason because he did it all on his own. This man was completely out of control. He needed to be put in his place. To convince the president to destroy the US economy with his own hand would be the ultimate coup de grace for the CIA. 

A lockdown would restart trade with China. It did in fact achieve that. 

How would Fauci and the CIA convince Trump to lock down and restart trade with China? By exploiting these weaknesses and others too: his vulnerability to flattery, his desire for presidential aggrandizement, and his longing for Xi-like powers over all to turn off and then turn on a whole country. Then they would push Trump to buy the much-needed personal protective equipment from China. 

They finally got their way: somewhere between March 10 or possibly as late as March 14, Trump gave the go ahead. The press conference of March 16, especially those magical 70 seconds in which Fauci read the words mandating lockdowns because Birx turned out to be too squeamish, was the great turning point. A few days later, Trump was on the phone with Xi asking for equipment. 

In addition, such a lockdown would greatly please the digital tech industry, which would experience a huge boost in demand, plus large corporations like Amazon and WalMart, which would stay open as their competitors were closed. Finally, it would be a massive subsidy to pharma and especially the mRNA platform technology itself, which would enjoy the credit for ending the pandemic. 

If this whole scenario is true, it means that all along Fauci was merely playing a role, a front man for much deeper interests and priorities in the CIA-led intelligence community. This broad outline makes sense of why Fauci changed his mind on lockdowns, including the timing of the change. There are still many more details to know, but these new fragments of new information take our understanding in a new and more coherent direction. 

Gaza Ceasefire?

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Netanyahu and his settler fanatics will never agree to stop killing Palestinians.

By Kurt Nimmo

Source: Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics

Hundreds of thousands of people in America, Europe, and the Middle East are in the streets protesting against the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. They demand a ceasefire now.

Yes, calling for a ceasefire is helpful, but it will not accomplish much. Israel will not stop killing Palestinians and Washington will continue to support the ethno-religious settler fanatics in Palestine in response to the outsized influence of the Israeli lobby. Call it “J Street,” the “Jewish Street” that commands much of USG foreign policy.

Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip, and its raids, home demolitions, and murder of activists and journalists in the West Bank and Jerusalem, will not suddenly come to a halt in response to growing protests.

If you believe this, you know nothing about Zionism. Israel will continue stampeding two million Palestinians into South Gaza and eventually through the Rafah Crossing into the empty desert of the Egyptian Sinai.

This has been the plan for decades. It’s not a secret.

Israel is a terrorist state. It was founded and governed by terrorists. David Ben-Gurion, Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Barak, Yitzhak Rabin, and yes, Golda Meir, were all terrorists.

Together these terrorists—who are rarely called terrorists in the West—ethnically cleansed nearly a million Palestinians. Some of them were members of terrorist groups before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

Others, for instance, Yigal Allon, participated in death squads (“Special Night Squads”) that murdered Palestinians “without compunction,” while the current prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, oversaw the mass murder of Palestinian mothers and children with the Zionist pogroms “Cast Lead,” “Pillar of Defense,” and “Protective Edge.”

Begin, the sixth prime minister of Israel described the massacre of Palestinians as “a splendid act of conquest.” He led the terror organization Irgun. It slaughtered Arabs, Brits, and other Jews. Irgun bombed the King David Hotel, killing almost a hundred people.

The ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza and the West Bank has remained consistent. In 1953, future Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon blew up 42 houses and killed more than 60 residents in the Arab village of Qibya.

In the 1970s, he was tasked with “pacifying” Gaza. The IDF blew up houses, bulldozed tracts of land in refugee camps, imprisoned thousands, and imposed collective punishment.

“There is no Zionism, colonization, or Jewish state without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands,” Sharon said.

The current Netanyahu government consists of racist fanatics. Itamar Ben-Gvir leads Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power). He is Israel’s National Security Minister. His convictions for inciting racism and supporting terrorism did not prevent him from holding office.

The Religious Zionism faction is led by Bezalel Smotrich, the government’s current Minister of Finance and adjunct Minister in the Ministry of Defense. He is a settler from Kedumim in the occupied West Bank. He calls for Palestinian villages to be “erased” and has proudly called himself a “fascist homophobe.”

On February 26, when Zionist settlers torched the Palestinian village of Huwwara—killing one Palestinian and injuring 100 others—Smotrich complained. He said the village should have been “wiped out.”

Ramzy Baroud writes for The Jordan Times:

In Israel’s right-wing parties, racism is an important prerequisite to succeed in politics.  In fact, this is precisely how Itamar Ben-Gvir rose from being a youth leader of the extremist Kach Party to becoming the country’s national security minister. Now, both characters, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, hold the keys to the fate of many Palestinian communities, and both are eager to expand illegal Jewish settlements, regardless of the illegality of such action and the bloodbath resulting from it.

There are virtually thousands of other instances of Zionist violence against largely nonviolent Palestinians and their supporters.

“Our report reveals the true extent of Israel’s apartheid regime,” Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said last year.

Whether they live in Gaza, East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, or Israel itself, Palestinians are treated as an inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights. We found that Israel’s cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid. The international community has an obligation to act.

Millions of ordinary people, outraged by the Zionist invasion and slaughter, have filled the streets in America, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the UK, Spain, Australia, Canada, Greece, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Japan, Tunisia, Ghana, and Indonesia (the latter with the largest Muslim population in the world).

None of these protests or the weak demands by the European Union to “pause” the terror bombing of Gaza will halt Israel’s long-anticipated final ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

For Netanyahu’s settler-colonial government, all those sickened and outraged by the Zionist bloodbath are nothing more than antisemites, Jew-haters, and Hamas supporters. Protests are irrelevant, as Israel will continue murdering people with USG-provided bombs until forced to stop.

The governments of the US, UK, and Europe will not move to stop the mass murder of Palestinian Arabs. The growing protests, a few violent, will not prevent the Zionist campaign to kill and remove Palestinians considered human animals, drugged cockroaches in a bottle, and beasts on two legs.

The only paramilitaries capable of confronting the “Zionist Entity” are Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran provides anti-Zionist rhetoric and support for Hezbollah, but it will not enter the war unless USG-Israel threatens its security and existence.

It is well-known Israel has a bounty of nukes. The Zionist “Samson Option” threatens to nuke Arab nations and even capitals in Europe if it is forced to act like a civilized nation. This and the USG armada parked near Cyprus in the Mediterranean have given pause to neighboring nations as their populations rally to join the fight against Israel.

Sad to say, there will be no ceasefire, not so long as Israel is governed by racist ethno-religious fanatics. They will continue murdering people until they are stopped by their own people or an outside force.