Congress's 1/6 Committee Claims Absolute Power as it Investigates Citizens With No Judicial Limits

The Committee plotted with JPMorgan and its lawyer, former Obama AG Loretta Lynch, to obtain a citizen's financial records with no possibility of judicial review.

In its ongoing attempt to investigate and gather information about private U.S. citizens, the Congressional 1/6 Committee is claiming virtually absolute powers that not even the FBI or other law enforcement agencies enjoy. Indeed, lawyers for the committee have been explicitly arguing that nothing proscribes or limits their authority to obtain data regarding whichever citizens they target and, even more radically, that the checks imposed on the FBI (such as the requirement to obtain judicial authorization for secret subpoenas) do not apply to the committee.

As we have previously reported and as civil liberties groups have warned, there are serious constitutional doubts about the existence of the committee itself. Under the Constitution and McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases interpreting it, the power to investigate crimes lies with the executive branch, supervised by the judiciary, and not with Congress. Congress does have the power to conduct investigations, but that power is limited to two narrow categories: 1) when doing so is designed to assist in its law-making duties (e.g., directing executives of oil companies to testify when considering new environmental laws) and 2) in order to exert oversight over the executive branch.

What Congress is barred from doing, as two McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases ruled, is exactly what the 1/6 committee is now doing: conducting a separate, parallel criminal investigation in order to uncover political crimes committed by private citizens. Such powers are dangerous precisely because Congress’s investigative powers are not subject to the same safeguards as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. And just as was true of the 1950s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that prompted those Supreme Court rulings, the 1/6 committee is not confining its invasive investigative activities to executive branch officials or even citizens who engaged in violence or other illegality on January 6, but instead is investigating anyone and everyone who exercised their Constitutional rights to express views about and organize protests over their belief that the 2020 presidential election contained fraud. Indeed, the committee's initial targets appear to be taken from the list of those who applied for protest permits in Washington: a perfectly legal, indeed constitutionally protected, act.

This abuse of power is not merely abstract. The Congressional 1/6 Committee has been secretly obtaining private information about American citizens en masse: telephone records, email logs, internet and browsing history, and banking transactions. And it has done so without any limitations or safeguards: no judicial oversight, no need for warrants, no legal limitations of any kind.

Indeed, the committee has been purposely attempting to prevent citizens who are the targets of their investigative orders to have any opportunity to contest the legality of this behavior in court. As we reported in October, the committee sent dozens if not hundreds of subpoenas to telecom companies demanding a wide range of email and other internet records, and — without any legal basis — requested that those companies not only turn over those documents but refrain from notifying their own customers of the request. If the companies were unwilling to comply with this "request,” then the committee requested that they either contact the committee directly or just disregard the request — in other words, the last thing they wanted was to enable one of their targets to learn that they were being investigated because that would enable them to seek a judicial ruling about the legality of the committee's actions.

But now the committee is escalating its aggressive investigative actions. They have begun sending subpoenas to private banks, demanding the banking records of private citizens, and doing so such that either the person never finds out or finds out too late to obtain a judicial order about the legality of the committee's behavior. In one case, they targeted JP Morgan with these subpoenas while knowing that that bank is being represented by former Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch; Lynch — unsurprisingly — then directed her client not to accommodate any requests from its own customers to ensure they can seek judicial review.

On November 22, the 1/6 Committee served a subpoena on Taylor Budowich — a former spokesman for the Trump campaign who never worked for the U.S. Government — that requested a wide range of documents as well as his deposition testimony. On December 14, Budowich voluntarily complied by handing over a large amount of his personal records, and then, on December 22, he flew to Washington at his own expense and submitted to questioning. There is no suggestion that Budowich was engaged in any violence or other illegal acts at the Capitol on January 6. Their only interest in this private citizen is his connection to the Trump campaign and his stated view that he believed the 2020 election was marred by fraud.

After he furnished the committee with those documents and then testified, Budowich learned from others that the committee was issuing subpoenas directly to the banks used by other individuals for their personal accounts. He thus requested that his lawyer notify his own bank, JPMorgan Chase, that he would object to their cooperation with any subpoena without first providing notice to him so that he can have time to seek a legal ruling in court.

Typically, citizens learn when law enforcement agencies such as the FBI serve subpoenas to third-party providers such as banks or internet companies. That allows a crucial right: to contest the legality of the action in court before the documents are supplied. But when such a subpoena is concealed from the person, it prevents them from obtaining judicial review. In general, citizens learn of FBI subpoenas, and the FBI (with rare exceptions) has the power to impose a "gag order” or otherwise prevent the person from learning about it only if they first persuade a court that such an extreme measure is warranted (by arguing, for instance, that a terror suspect will flee or destroy evidence if they learn they are being investigated). That safeguard ensures that in most cases, a citizen has the right to seek judicial protection from an illegal act by an investigative body.

But the 1/6 Committee recognizes no right of any kind and no limits on its power. On November 23 — the day after it served a subpoena on Budowich himself — it served a subpoena on Budowich's bank, JPMorgan. The original date for the bank to produce the records was December 7, but JPMorgan — advised by Loretta Lynch as its legal counsel — bizarrely requested that the deadline be extended until December 24: the day before Christmas, knowing that courts would be closed that day and the next. It was only on December 21 — when Budowich was in Washington for his testimony before the committee — did JPMorgan send him notice at his home that it had received a subpoena and intended to produce the requested documents on December 24: just three days later. As JPMorgan and Lynch knew would happen, Budowich did not see the letter until he arrived home on the evening of December 22: less than forty-eight hours before the bank told him they were going to give up all of his financial records to the committee.

Upon discovering that the committee had subpoenaed his bank, Budowich's lawyers immediately advised JPMorgan that they had legal objections to the subpoena, and requested that — given it was about to be Christmas Eve and the courts would be closed — the bank seek an extension from the committee to enable Budowich to seek a judicial ruling. But the bank, advised by Loretta Lynch, refused — and told him they intended to turn the documents over on Christmas regardless of whether that gave him time to request judicial intervention. The bank even refused to provide a copy of the subpoena they received from the committee, which Budowich, to this very day, has not seen.

Budowich's lawyers did everything possible to seek judicial intervention before JPMorgan gave all his financial documents to the committee, but the timing agreed to by the committee, Lynch and the bank — documents produced on Christmas Eve, with notice to him arriving just a couple days before when he was testifying in Washington — made it impossible, by design. As a result, JPMorgan gave all of his banking records to the committee without even seeking an extension.

Budowich was therefore left with no alternative but to file an after-the-fact lawsuit against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the committee members, seeking an emergency injunction against the committee's use of his banking records. In response, both the committee and JPMorgan argued that the entire question was “moot” given that they already handed over the documents.

In other words, lawyers for the committee and Loretta Lynch created a plot whereby JPMorgan would notify Budowich of its intent to hand over the documents right before Christmas, so as to purposely deny him time to seek a court ruling, and then used the fact that he was "too late” in filing as a ground for arguing that the court should shut its doors to him and refuse to even give him a hearing. The court agreed that Budowich's request for an emergency injunction was “moot” given that the bank already supplied the documents, but agreed to rule on the merits of the arguments about whether the subpoena was legal.

The parties’ briefs on this question were submitted to an Obama-appointed federal judge, James Boasberg, in Washington. The oral argument on Budowich's request to enjoin the use of his banking records by the committee was held earlier on Thursday, and Judge Boasberg quickly rejected Budowich's objections to the subpoena. It will now be appealed to the Court of Appeals, but the issues presented by the committee's arguments are chilling.

At the hearing, the committee's lawyers essentially repeated the same argument they advanced in their legal brief: namely, that none of the legal safeguards imposed on the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to guard against abuse of power apply to this Congressional committee, which therefore enjoys virtually absolute power to do what it wants.

That is not an exaggerated summary of the committee's argument. The primary law on which Budowich is relying is The Right to Financial Privacy Act (“RFPA”), which prohibits any “financial institution, or officers, employees or agent of the financial institution” from "provid[ing] to any Government authority access to or copies of, or the information contained in, the financial records of any customer” unless they have first complied with the requirement of that law. Among the key requirements is that a “financial institution shall not release the financial records of a customer until the Government authority seeking such records certifies in writing to the financial institution that it has complied with the applicable provisions of this chapter.” As Budowich's lawyers argued, the key to the law is that a person whose financial records are sought must receive notice of that attempt and be given sufficient time to challenge it in court:

Both 12 U.S.C. §§ 3405 (administrative subpoena or summons) and 3408 (formal written request) require that a copy of the subpoena or request “have been served upon the customer or mailed to his last known address on or before the date on which the subpoena or summons was served on the financial institution” together with a formal statutory notice allowing ten (10) days from the date or service or fourteen (14) days from the date of mailing the required notice. See 12 U.S.C. §§ 3405, 3408. Additional provisions of RFPA establish the right of a financial institution customer to challenge a request for their financial records in an appropriate United States District Court, and that proceedings involving such challenges should be completed or decided within seven (7) calendar days of the filing of any Government response. See 12 U.S.C. § 3410(a)-(b).

The committee did not deny that it failed to meet these requirements. Obviously, they could not argue that, given that the plan they created with JPMorgan and its lawyer, Loretta Lynch, was designed to ensure that Budowich have no time to obtain a judicial ruling before his bank records were handed over. Instead, the committee's response is they do not have to comply with this law. “The Act restricts only agencies and departments of the United States, and the Select Committee is neither,” the committee's lawyer contended. In fact, they explicitly argued that these safeguards were meant to be imposed only on the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, but were intended to exempt Congress even when, as here, they are clearly engaged in investigating private citizens for potential crimes. “Multiple provisions of the statute underscore that Congress intended 'Government authority' to mean an executive branch agency or department,” the committee's lawyers wrote in an assertion of power breathtaking in its scope and limitlessness.

All of the other committee's arguments are similarly designed to bestow on itself absolute and unlimited power in how it investigates private citizens, and to insist that the judiciary is without power to impose limits on it. The committee insists, for instance, that it can investigate anyone it wants in connection with 1/6 even if its motive is not to enact new laws and even if the documents it seeks (Budowich's financial records) have no relationship to any proposed new laws. That is because, it says, “Congressional committees are not required to identify a specific piece of legislation in advance of conducting an investigation of the pertinent facts. It is sufficient that a committee’s investigation concerns a subject on which legislation 'could be had.'"

Such a principle, if accepted, would destroy any limits on Congress’s ability to investigate citizens (clearly, it was possible for the McCarthy-era Congressional investigations to lead to new laws even though, as the Supreme Court twice ruled when striking them down, that was clearly not its primary purpose). But Judge Boasberg nonetheless accepted the committee's argument on the ground that an appellate court had already ruled that the 1/6 Committee had a valid legislative purpose and he was therefore bound by that decision.

The committee's other arguments are even more extreme: namely, that “the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause provides absolute immunity to Members and committees when performing legislative acts" and that “sovereign immunity prohibits litigation against Congress to which it has not consented, and no such consent has been.” That would mean that the 1/6 Committee could literally do whatever it wanted to citizens, and no court would have the right even to review the legality or constitutionality of what it is doing let alone put a stop to it.

What happened during the first War on Terror — and so many other events that were perceived as traumatic — is instructive here. So many Americans were so horrified by the carnage of that day that, for years, many did not care or want to hear about legal niceties, constitutional limits or civil liberties regarding the government's actions. Anything the government did in the name of responding to or retaliating for 9/11 became inherently justified, and anyone who objected — no matter the principles cited — was deemed to be on the side of the terrorists.

The same dynamic is prevailing here. There are serious constitutional limits on the ability of Congress to investigate private citizens. It is blatantly abusive to scheme with JPMorgan and its counsel Loretta Lynch to ensure that a citizen has no time to seek judicial relief regarding the committee's attempt to obtain mounds of his personal and financial records. And, in general, the committee has been on a rampage targeting not only Trump officials or people who engaged in criminal behavior at the Capitol on January 6 but a wide group of citizens whose only crime appears to be their political beliefs and associations — exactly what the Supreme Court cited when striking down the excesses of Congress’s McCarthy-era probes of citizens.

But with the media overwhelmingly cheering anything done in the name of stopping the Trump movement and those who supported 1/6 in any way, all of these civil liberties concerns and constitutional protections are run roughshod over in the name of safety. The latest arguments from the Congressional 1/6 Committee amount to little more than an assertion of unfettered power for Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney and the rest of the committee members to dig into the lives of anyone they want without limits. (read more)

The Histrionics and Melodrama Around 1/6 Are Laughable, but They Serve Several Key Purposes

As Kamala Harris compares 1/6 to 9/11 and Nancy Pelosi introduces the cast of Hamilton to sing about democracy, today's inanity should not obscure its dangers.

The number of people killed by pro-Trump supporters at the January 6 Capitol riot is equal to the number of pro-Trump supporters who brandished guns or knives inside the Capitol. That is the same number as the total of Americans who — after a full year of a Democrat-led DOJ conducting what is heralded as “the most expansive federal law enforcement investigation in US history” — have been charged with inciting insurrection, sedition, treason or conspiracy to overthrow the government as a result of that riot one year ago. Coincidentally, it is the same number as Americans who ended up being criminally charged by the Mueller probe of conspiring with Russia over the 2016 election, and the number of wounds — grave or light — which AOC, who finally emerged at night to assure an on-edge nation that she was “okay" while waiting in an office building away from the riot at the rotunda, sustained on that solemn day.

That number is zero. But just as these rather crucial facts do not prevent the dominant wing of the U.S. corporate media and Democratic Party leaders from continuing to insist that Donald Trump's 2016 election victory was illegitimate due to his collusion with the Kremlin, it also does not prevent January 6 from being widely described in those same circles as an Insurrection, an attempted coup, an event as traumatizing as Pearl Harbor (2,403 dead) or the 9/11 attack (2,977 dead), and as the gravest attack on American democracy since the mid-19th Century Civil War (750,000 dead). The Huffington Post's White House reporter S.V. Date said that it was wrong to compare 1/6 to 9/11, because the former — the three-hour riot at the Capitol — was “1,000 percent worse.”

Indeed, when it comes to melodrama, histrionics, and exploitation of fear levels from the 1/6 riot, there has never been any apparent limit. And two weeks ago — the one-year anniversary of that three-hour riot — there is no apparent end in sight. Too many political and media elites are far too vested in this maximalist narrative for them to relinquish it voluntarily.

The orgy of psychodrama on the one year anniversary was so much worse and more pathetic than I expected — and I expected it to be extremely bad and pathetic. “House Democrats [waited] their turn on the House floor to talk to Dick Cheney as a beacon for American democracy,” reported CNN's Edward-Isaac Dovere; “One by one, Democrats are coming over to introduce themselves to former VP Dick Cheney and shake his hand,” added ABC News’ Ben Siegel. Nancy Pelosi gravely introduced Lin-Manuel Miranda and the cast of Hamilton to sermonize and sing about the importance of American democracy. The Huffington Post's senior politics reporter Igor Bobic unironically expressed gratitude for “the four legged emotional support professionals roaming the Capitol this week, helping officers, staffers, and reporters alike” — meaning therapy dogs. Yesterday, CNN's Kaise Hunt announced: "Tomorrow is going to be a tough one for those of us who were there or had loved ones in the building. Thinking of all of you and finding strength knowing I’m not alone in this." Unsurprisingly but still repellently: Kamala Harris compared 1/6 to 9/11.

That the January 6 riot was some sort of serious attempted insurrection or "coup” was laughable from the start, and has become even more preposterous with the passage of time and the emergence of more facts. The United States is the most armed, militarized and powerful regime in the history of humanity. The idea that a thousand or so Trump supporters, largely composed of Gen X and Boomers, who had been locked in their homes during a pandemic — three of whom were so physically infirm that they dropped dead from the stress — posed anything approaching a serious threat to “overthrow” the federal government of the United States of America is such a self-evidently ludicrous assertion that any healthy political culture would instantly expel someone suggesting it with a straight face. (read more)

(Unvetted and unknown illegal aliens
allowed to fly WITHOUT valid ID.)

Everything Is Clear From Up Here

Notes on survival and remaking the future from the top of a fucking mountain.

The Awakened
There are frequent delusions being peddled of an end to the pandemic and a return to normalcy as the lies continue to unravel in the face of a brutal reality and the endless collapsing narratives. For those captives enthralled with this new development hope springs forth to seize attention and satiate their desperate need for optimism. Survival in times of crisis does not depend on optimism or hope, although the latter can be a useful psychological motivator in desperately severe circumstances. Survival requires an acknowledgment of truth and reality, so that reasonable decisions can be made based on accurate intelligence. The acquisition of accurate intelligence is a laborious process these days with rampant censorship and propaganda proffered hourly as authoritative “news”.

This process begins with the willingness to consciously open one’s mind and dispense with reinforced biases, question long held beliefs, extricate one’s digital presence from algorithmic echo chambers, refuse to freeze when shocked by the horror of new information which often leads to a retreat to the safety and security of old or popular beliefs wrapped in warm delusions. Once that retreat is rejected, one must question their beliefs a third and fourth time and recognize errors where they exist until those old beliefs no longer interfere with processing new information. It’s a lonely process, that requires accepting a devastating loneliness which inevitably follows. Call it a cognitive behavioral procedure of un-washing one’s brain that is so constantly bombarded with lies and propaganda it often cannot distinguish the line between healthy skepticism and bug house paranoia.

What information does a lonely healthy skeptic glean from an impassioned retrospective analysis of the past two years?

The lies are everywhere. They are intentional. Your brain and emotions are tools for management and manipulation. Your behavior is to be monitored and conditioned. The hearts and minds of millions will soon recognize the evil social engineers are all around them, in the halls of every institution public or private. They seek to divide and control totally. This is healthy skepticism based on facts and evidence. This is not bug house paranoia.

Politically we have witnessed nothing short of the end of liberal democracy. Ryszard Legutko warned about this in his 2018 book The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies. I suspect he was largely ignored because he is conservative and all powerful institutions across the west especially academia have been captured by ideological leftists of one shade or another (Socialists, Greens, Marxists, Communists) who have made conditions for tyranny not only possible but inevitable. They love total control, censorship, segregation, destroying political enemies by any means, especially camps. As Legutko observes, the post-Soviet "end of history" failed to sufficiently demonize socialism and communism, instead under the guise of tolerance, allowed these forces direct seats inside parliaments and ivory towers across the west. Liberal democracies were eaten from the inside by these forces who have been weaponized by higher forces - global oligarchs - to discard the truth as little red guard enforcers of politically motivated tyranny that dresses itself up with utopian words like inclusion, equity and social justice. We are now reaping these consequences everywhere.

Your merchants were the world’s important people.
By your magic spell all the nations were led astray.
- Revelations 18:23 (The Finality of Babylon’s Doom)

The road to greater tyranny has been sufficiently paved by this collusion between global oligarchs and their totalitarian foot soldiers. We are all witnesses in real time to the beginning of coordinated global medical police states that endorse pharmacological apartheid, digital surveillance passports, experimental toxic vaccine mandates for a lab-engineered virus funded by those in power eager to cover-up their crimes by eliminating the control group, and intentionally corrupting and debasing science to engineer their technocratic Pharmakeia North Koreas. They will destroy everything to meet their ends, including businesses, lives, elderly pensions (by killing the pensioners) national fiat currencies, supply chains, centrally controlled markets, private property, common sense, science, truth, trust in institutions, justice, the rule of law and all individual liberties that millions sacrificed their lives for throughout our once cherished history.

These technocratic Pharmakeia North Koreas require total control of a totally subdued and compliant populace. They’ve activated corporate-state cooperation in censoring the truth wherever it appears, and substituted it with endless streams of lies and propaganda that enable the silly cult-like impositions of human indignities devoid of science or even common sense. I will spare myself the time and simply copy and paste the list from one of many other pieces I’ve written on this.

They include the useless masks while standing and moving but not seated and eating; measured social distancing via floor stickers and arrows to herd participants like farm animals; manipulated PCR testing technology triggering false positives which were never meant to diagnose anything; the sick-until-proven innocent presumptions that divide us socially and isolate us mentally; engineering mass psychosis against the unvaccinated “dirty” others despite all scientific evidence showing no difference between groups; the rules for the masses that never apply to the elites in power; the surveillance tracing and imprisoning healthy people in their own homes; retributive coercive fines and redundancies (now imprisonment) for not complying; constantly testing healthy people with no symptoms, once a habit of hypochondriacs and maniacs; abusing children in schools by covering their faces with bacterial diapers while distancing them, stunting their psychological and intellectual growth, destroying their childhoods; engineering toxic suspicions by weaponizing the idea of ubiquitous ‘invisible harm’ in public places that placate the neurotic and fearful at the expense of everyone sane and rational; injecting endless contagions of fear and psychological manipulation into all western populations; ignoring early treatments to save lives so that a coordinated systemic method of killing for profit is government subsidized and substituted as “treatment” by corporations masquerading as hospitals.

Narrative Collapse

Yes, Omicron is a useful gift bestowed from nature, or potentially another lab. It’s a gift in its transmissibility, mildness and vaccine escape, rendering all of Pfizer and Moderna’s magic injections utterly useless, exposing the soft underbellies of our institutional hucksters, profiteers and mad technocrats to millions who had previously been catatonic in their thrall. The useful dupes are turning. They have yet to begin the cognitive behavioral procedure of un-washing their brains, or a comprehensive retrospective analysis of their past two years under a blinding spell, but they’re out of their comas and taking in a new paradigm. In what numbers who really knows. It is this process of increasing their numbers and thereby power of the counter totalitarian movement that has offered renewed optimism to those who have horrifyingly witnessed these atrocities for two years, wondering if they will ever end.

These newly activated people are mostly in various states of awakening, one narrative collapse at a time. There are levels on this journey toward becoming fully aware of what has transpired the past two years. We need to encourage everyone who has set forth on this journey, wherever they may be in the world.

The Urban Man
This person is at level zero. They love their chains. They will cooperate with technocrats and defend their tyranny as “science and safety for the common good” even if they have to line up daily for a Pfizer-Moderna-Nano-razorblade fusion drip and the permissioned QR code scan of obedience that follows. They will have their nasal cavity probed with all manner of pokers so they can feel a part of the disturbing cult that gives their life meaning. They will happily film themselves barking at others in public whose paper muzzles slip below their noses, using words like “problematic” and “harmful” to justify their performed outrage. Most of their behavior is guided by appearing virtuous to other Urban Men than actually being virtuous.

They will never hesitate to participate in medical theater and all form of ritualistic absurdities the state demands of them. When the government is cruel to those who exercise autonomy over their bodies by firing them from their jobs, these people celebrate the cruelty as a victory for safety and “public health”. If they could have the government cuddle with them and their teddies at night they would immediately welcome it. They will still be fast asleep when the first oligarchs and western health technocrats are strung up for crimes against humanity. They will scream in horror and disbelief as the first necks are snapped with elegant Steinway piano wire, “O! M! G! Like, what did they do so wrong!?” They do not see the evil in forcefully injecting toxic substances into 5-year-olds so that Pfizer is shielded from liability with legal immunity. These people are perfectly splendid obedient vassals for any tyrant to mobilize. Do not bother with trying to wake them, you are only wasting your breath. Our nightmare is their joy and happiness.

The Desert Man
They have awakened and find themselves all alone. They suspect something is not right but have spent their lives appeasing others and are too afraid to speak up. They are waiting for someone else to speak up first so they feel more comfortable about not sounding like a “conspiracy theorist” who takes “horse paste” as medicine. Their social circles are riddled with too many sensitive and safety-first urban mans who send them “fact checked” information from NPR, CBC, or the BBC. When no one is looking they’ll sneak a visit to the Covid World website or front line doctors for truth. Although the conditions for further awakening have not arrived yet, they would welcome its acceleration. They suspect the truth is being censored, and are thirsty for any drip they can find. Some of them have received both injections and a booster, although reluctantly. They find mandates cruel and inhumane and do not support them, though some have downloaded government apps to participate in medical apartheid. They will likely keep wandering the desert until they reach the sea or mountains. It could take months or even years but the important thing is that they’ve begun their journey as one or another narrative collapses around them. They are in search of the truth and we must keep telling it to quench their moral dehydration so their journey can continue and they can feel more courageous in extricating themselves from the noxious fumes of the Urban Man.

The Seafarer
They can see land in all directions, but are unsure which direction will fare best for them. They have left their blue state for a red state where they will not be fired from the job they love for not submitting to the pharmaceutical guinea pig game. They prefer not to have to show a “passport” or muzzle their faces for medical theater to participate in society. They are neither neurotic, nor fearful, yet do not wish for the neurotic and fearful minority in society to dictate laws where they live. They’re curious enough to read data and process it with their own critical thoughts. Some may have received a jab or two, but now regret it and wouldn’t dare line up for a booster. They have been wondering why the definition of vaccines was changed, why natural immunity has been ignored, why so many doctors are being fired or silenced for speaking the truth. They know they must guide their vessel in the right direction, and let the winds of truth carry them toward a greater understanding of what is really happening. When they hit land, they’ll be so thoroughly energized to learn more as they continue on toward the mountains.

The Forest Man
They have made it closer to the mountains. They bounce from tree to tree, each one a new story about our insane world, new evidence, new proof. They are well versed in the medical theatre and toxic vaccines and are ready to embrace other theories but are afraid they might be misled. They refuse to wear masks in public places, knowing they are a useless tool, and merely a signal of obedience and submission. They refuse the toxic injections, having deep suspicions about its rush to market, the origins of the engineered virus and have connected a few odious billionaires and institutions to the diabolical machinations all around them.

They know the tyranny is intentional, is engineered, but are unsure of exactly how and to what degree. They’re ready to climb to the mountain top, but they just can’t wrap their mind around the possibility that such evil exists in our world today. As a psychological defense mechanism, they block out the worst elements of our present reality. Yet they keep bumping into trees that force them to constantly question the possibility, the likelihood based on all other evidence before them that the evil is real and might be intentional, and if things keep heading in the current direction they can foresee the darkness, with greater death, the uprooting of lives, the terror and the trauma. They see the mountains all around them and want to venture up higher, where they might have a better vantage point. Another tree hits them in the form of a new study on vaccine resistance to the latest variant and they stop to read that instead before participating in the sound and fury with others still in the forest online, a source of needed comfort.

The Mountain Man
Many years ago near the final question of a final job interview for a position I needed but didn’t really want, for some company that did something unimportant in Prague I was asked by the hiring manager that old question about what kind of animal you would be and why. I had read about different answers to this question and in which scenarios to use different animals, but at the moment I simply exhaled all the wind out of me and slouched down in my chair. I no longer wanted the job. The question was silly and I had partially forgotten which choice was best for this middle manager gig, so I sat in a petulant silence that made her and the department manager feel a bit awkward.

“Well, what animal?” She finally asked.

No longer wanting the job I turned to honesty instead of pretenses, thinking it would disqualify my candidacy.

“I don’t know. I guess a hawk or eagle. A high flying predatory bird.”

“And why?”

“There’s a Buddhist saying that you can’t take a holy man away from the top of a mountain.”

“Okay. So why a hawk?”

“Well, these birds can fly higher than some mountains. They can see in all directions for hundreds of kilometers, yet they’ve also evolved with binocular vision to see the tiniest detail on the ground. They can distinguish a mouse from a rock from hundreds of feet in the air. They move fast, and have few predators. They dominate the skies, can see everything all at once, both big and small, near and far, and move quickly toward any direction. I think I would feel free up there.”

In my honesty I had described a place and situation where I would have preferred to be in that very moment instead of that stuffy conference room, yet didn’t realize I was also checking all the metaphorical psychological boxes on a hiring manager’s chart. She asked me to step outside the room. After two minutes she called me back in and they offered me the job on the spot. I went straight to the pub in anguish beating myself up pint after pint, wondering why I didn’t just say Comodo Dragon or Sloth.

I would now have to press my other white shirt, find a different tie, and come back on Monday wearing my other suit. Before Wednesday I’d need to buy more shirts, maybe a third suit. I would have spent the first paycheck before I earned it.

The second night into my ‘new career’ I got home, emailed my resignation, loosened my tie and started on a one page business plan that had been in my mind for months, before cracking open a beer and smashing out the HTML, CSS and JavaScript for the website. The business plan turned into twenty pages and a marketing plan. A step sheet, and calendar of checkpoint progress followed. I bought a domain for the website, and hosting service, hired a Hungarian computer science student on his summer break to smash out the PHP and database work. I didn’t stop for six weeks.

You can’t take a holy man away from the top of a mountain, but you sure can scare a scoundrel the hell out of a middle manager’s cubicle. I did not know it at the time but for those six weeks I undertook the difficult and risky journey from Desert Man to Mountain Man.

There is something about trekking to the top of a mountain, no matter the size. The extravagant majestic reward of a 360-degree-view makes it worth every calorie expended. That first exhalation at the top as you tilt your gaze in all directions. The tiny elements in the distance you passed on your way up look like little toy Lego versions. You have already seen them up close, but now you can see their place in the vastness of everything. As you catch your breath you realize this is it, there is nowhere else to go from here, you’ve made it.

To the Urban Man out there, fuck you!

To the Desert Man, the Seafarer and those still bouncing from tree to tree inside the maze of the forest, strap on your boots and start climbing the nearest mountain. They are all around you, pick one and go, and do not stop until you reach the top.

You will see the whole picture from here, big and small, near and far. You will see your life, your history, your experiences that shade your perceptions of our tyrannical moment and the darker future it portends. You will see in the distance the Desert Man, the Seafarers, those on their way up toward infinite clarity to join you from the forest. You will recognize yourself in them and recall finer details of the courageous journey you just made.

You will see through a clear lens of time that permanence is the illusion of every age and every age is blinded by the illusion. That false idols were never on your side, nor prosperous entrepreneurs or pundits who toe the line or leaders you invested time, emotion and capital to endorse, all whom have stabbed a knife so painfully deep inside your back you will need to find every ounce of restraint and forgiveness to temper your anger and wrath and thirst for vengeance.

You will see from up here that there are no free markets, no stable currencies, no guarantee of food on the shelves where you shop tomorrow. You will come to realize that if the last two years can be planned, engineered and carried out with no consequences and such utter disdain for humanity, there is nothing they won’t do to terrorize or kill innocent people for their ends. You will see there are no sciences uncorrupted, no academics who can’t be bought, no doctors who wouldn’t mechanically suffocate your grandmother [with a ventilator] after destroying her kidneys [with remdesivir] for a chance to increase his salary and keep his license. No corporate entity or government agency that wouldn’t lie, cheat, steal, gaslight to keep the truth from you, and you from the truth. You will see that liberty is not an assumption, it cannot be assumed anywhere on earth if not fought for constantly, while its gates can never be unguarded ever again. You will see that if you want any semblance of liberty again you will have to depend only on yourself, and trust none of those you once trusted who have not made it to the mountain top yet, who cannot yet see all that you see with perfect fearless clarity. In this profound realization you will feel alone, but you must know that you are not.

You will see there is no going back now to an old normal, because there is no old normal to go back to, and there can be no accepting their new normal. We will have to start from scratch, together. Decentralization is the order of the day, but be wary the new bosses of that order who are funded by the old bosses of the tyrannical order. Many occupy the same silicon valley venture capital boardrooms. There will be no place for them in any rebuilding process. Be suspicious of the lack of privacy in blockchain and it’s engineered certainty, and its tirelessly loud and obnoxious advocates, all speculators with their eyes on their own digital wallets in cultish beams of laser red.

As paradigms continue to collapse and narratives can no longer be sustained and millions more awaken from their comas to begin their journeys to the mountain tops, there will be much to discuss about how we rebuild our destroyed world, and where we string up those responsible for its destruction, our final vital message and dire warning to anyone who dares again attempt atrocities we once considered unfathomable. Until then we must call out to the wanderers, the misguided, the deceived, the skeptics who have not yet begun their journeys to the mountain tops. Soon they will arrive by the tens of millions and we must prepare for their arrival. When there are enough of us up here to reach a critical mass, from atop a global ash heap of incinerated liberal democracies and all her once noble yet blindly worshipped institutions, then and only then can we begin to rebuild.

Until that day comes, go to the mountain top and all the madness and tyranny and psychological torture you’ve been groomed to endure, the criminal abuse that your children have been subjected, all the eugenics experiments mandated by government decree for corporate profit, all the genocidal depopulation dictates that shock your soul forcing you to retreat to the safety of comforting delusions, “Oh that could never happen today!”, all of it will be visible in all directions. It will not be easy to process, but it will require you come to see it all near and far sooner than later. The survival of everything you once loved, everything you once believed in, everyone you care about and the future that awaits them requires your deep and immediate consideration of this one simple command: Go forth to the mountain top! Everything is clear from up here! (read more)

Prominent Democrat, Publicly Critical of Joe Biden Border Policy, Gets a Visit from FBI Jackboots

The political motives behind this FBI effort are, yet again, brutally transparent.   The FBI are for Joe Biden what the Russian FSB is for Vladimir Putin.  That’s what they are. That’s all they are. That’s what they do.

How many dozens of examples does it take before people realize the FBI are criminal enforcers targeting any voices who rise in opposition to the DC system?

Seriously, when is enough, enough?  This should be a bipartisan issue.

Democrat Representative Henry Cuellar represents Texas’ 28th Congressional District, which extends to the U.S.- Mexico border, and has been in Congress since 2005.  Cuellar has been very public and very critical of how Joe Biden has collapsed the U.S-Mexico border enforcement.  Suddenly, Cuellar becomes the target of the FBI.

TEXAS – Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar’s Laredo home and campaign office were the subject of FBI activity Wednesday evening, according to an FBI spokesperson.

“The FBI was present in the vicinity of Windridge Drive and Estate Drive in Laredo conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity,” FBI spokesperson Rosanne Hughes told ABC News. “The FBI cannot provide further comment on an ongoing investigation.”

Local news reports showed members of the FBI’s Evidence Response Team at Cuellar’s campaign office as well.  The FBI declined to provide specifics about the investigation. Local news reports say that boxes were seen being taken from the home. (read more)

The FBI is 100% exclusively a political targeting unit of the Dept of Justice.

There was always a soft-Stasi aspect to the FBI from its inception.  However, in the modern era, especially after the passage of the Patriot Act and then the weaponization objectives of Barack Obama and Eric Holder, as they took advantage of the opportunities within the Patriot Act, the FBI was modified to be full Stasi against the American people.

Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI.  Instead, what they did was take the preexisting system and retool it so the weapons only targeted one side of the political continuum.  This point is where many people understandably get confused.

In the era shortly after 9/11, the DC national security apparatus was constructed to preserve continuity of government and simultaneously view all Americans as potential threats.  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) were created specifically for this purpose.

What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms so that only their ideological opposition became the target of the new national security system.  This is very important to understand as you dig deeper into this research outline.

Washington DC created the modern national security apparatus immediately and hurriedly after 9/11/01.  DHS came along in 2002, and within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 the ODNI was formed.  When Barack Obama and Eric Holder arrived a few years later, those newly formed institutions were viewed as opportunities to create a very specific national security apparatus that would focus almost exclusively against their political opposition.

The preexisting Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Dept of Justice (DOJ) were then repurposed to become two of the four pillars of the domestic national security apparatus.  However, this new construct would have a targeting mechanism based on political ideology.  The DHS, ODNI, DOJ and FBI became the four pillars of this new institution.  Atop these pillars is where you will find the Fourth Branch of Government.

We were not sleeping when this happened, we were wide awake.  However, we were stunningly distracted by the economic collapse that was taking place in 2006 and 2007 when the engineers behind Obama started to assemble the design.  By the time Obama took office in 2009, we sensed something profound was shifting, but we can only see exactly what shifted in the aftermath.  The four pillars were put into place, and a new Fourth Branch of Government was quietly created.

As time passed, and the system operators became familiar with their new tools, technology allowed the tentacles of the system to reach out and touch us. That is when we first started to notice that something very disconcerting was happening.  Those four pillars are the root of it, and if we take the time to understand how the Fourth Branch originated, questions about this current state of perpetual angst will start to make sense.

Grab a cup of your favorite beverage and take a walk with me as we outline how this was put together.  You might find many of the questions about our current state of political affairs beginning to make a lot more sense.

Remember, it is not my intent to outline the entire history of how we got to this place where the intelligence community now acts as the superseding fourth branch of government. Such an effort would be exhausting and likely take our discussion away from understanding the current dynamic.

History provided enough warnings from Dwight D. Eisenhower (military) to John F. Kennedy (CIA), to Richard Nixon (FBI), to all modern versions of warnings and frustrations from HPSCI Devin Nunes and ODNI Ric Grenell. None of those prior reference points are invalid, and all documented outlines of historic reference are likely true and accurate. However, a generational review is not useful, as the reference impacting us ‘right now‘ gets lost.

Instead, we pick up the expansive and weaponized intelligence system as it manifests after 9/11/01, and my goal is to highlight how the modern version of the total intelligence apparatus has now metastasized into a Fourth Branch of Government. It is this superseding branch that now touches and influences every facet of our life.

If we take the modern construct, originating at the speed of technological change, we can also see how the oversight or “check/balance” in our system of government became functionally obsolescent.

After many years of granular research about the intelligence apparatus inside our government, in the summer of 2020 I visited Washington DC to ask specific questions. My goal was to go where the influence agents within government actually operate, and to discover the people deep inside the institutions no one elected, and few people pay attention to.

It was during this process when I discovered how information is purposefully put into containment silos; essentially a formal process to block the flow of information between agencies and between the original branches. While frustrating to discover, the silo effect was important because understanding the communication between networks leads to our ability to reconcile conflict between what we perceive and what’s actually taking place.

After days of research and meetings in DC during 2020; amid a town that was serendipitously shut down due to COVID-19; I found a letter slid under the door of my room in a nearly empty hotel with an introduction of sorts. The subsequent discussions were perhaps the most important.

After many hours of specific questions and answers on specific examples, I realized why our nation is in this mess. That is when I discovered the fourth and superseding branch of government, the Intelligence Branch.

I am going to explain how the Intelligence Branch works: (1) to control every other branch of government; (2) how it functions as an entirely independent branch of government with no oversight; (3) how and why it was created to be independent from oversight; (4) what is the current mission of the IC Branch, and most importantly (5) who operates it.

The Intelligence Branch is an independent functioning branch of government, it is no longer a subsidiary set of agencies within the Executive Branch as most would think. To understand the Intelligence Branch, we need to drop the elementary school civics class lessons about three coequal branches of government and replace that outlook with the modern system that created itself.

The Intelligence Branch functions much like the State Dept, through a unique set of public-private partnerships that support it. Big Tech industry collaboration with intelligence operatives is part of that functioning; almost like an NGO. However, the process is much more important than most think. In this problematic perspective of a corrupt system of government, the process is the flaw – not the outcome.

There are people making decisions inside this little known, unregulated and out-of-control branch of government that impact every facet of our lives.

None of the people operating deep inside the Intelligence Branch were elected; and our elected representative House members genuinely do not know how the system works. I assert this position affirmatively because I have talked to House and Senate staffers, including the chiefs of staff for multiple House & Senate committee seats. They are not malicious people; however, they are genuinely clueless of things that happen outside their silo. That is part of the purpose of me explaining it, with examples, in full detail with sunlight.

We begin….

In April of 2016, the FBI launched a counterintelligence operation against presidential candidate Donald Trump. The questioning about that operation is what New York Representative Elise Stefanik cites in March of 2017, approximately 11 months later (First Two Minutes).

Things to note:

♦ Notice how FBI Director James Comey just matter-of-factly explains no one outside the DOJ was informed about the FBI operation. Why? Because that’s just the way things are done. His justification for unilateral operations was “because of the sensitivity of the matter“, totally ignoring any constitutional or regulatory framework for oversight; because, well, quite simply, there isn’t any. The intelligence apparatus inside the DOJ/FBI can, and does, operate based on their own independent determinations of authority.

♦ Notice also how FBI Director Comey shares his perspective that informing the National Security Council (NSC) is the equivalent of notifying the White House. The FBI leadership expressly believe they bear no responsibility to brief the Chief Executive. As long as they tell some unknown, unelected, bureaucratic entity inside the NSC, their unwritten responsibility to inform the top of their institutional silo is complete. If the IC wants to carve out the Oval Office, they simply plant information inside the NSC and, from their perspective, their civic responsibility to follow checks-and-balances is complete. This is an intentional construct.

♦ Notice how Comey obfuscates notification to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), by avoiding the fact James Clapper was the DNI from outset of the counterintelligence operation throughout the remainder of Obama’s term. When I get deeper into the process, we will understand how the Intelligence Branch has intentionally used the creation of the DNI position (established post 9/11/01) as a method to avoid oversight, not enhance it. Keeping an oblivious doofus like James Clapper in position held strategic value [Doofus Reminder HERE].

That video of James Comey being questioned by Elise Stefanik was the first example given to me by someone who knew the background of everything that was taking place preceding that March 20, 2017, hearing. That FBI reference point is a key to understand how the Intelligence Branch operates with unilateral authority above Congress (legislative branch), above the White House (executive branch), and even above the court system (judicial branch).

Also, watch this short video of James Clapper because it is likely many readers have forgotten, and likely even more readers have never seen it.  Watch closely how then White House national security adviser John Brennan is responding in that video.  This is before Brennan became CIA Director, this is when Brennan was helping Barack Obama put the pillars into place.  WATCH

[Sidebar: Every time I post this video it gets scrubbed from YouTube (example), so save it if you ever want to see it again.]

The video of James Clapper highlights how the ODNI position (created with good national security intention) ended up becoming the fulcrum for modern weaponization, and is now an office manipulated by agencies with a vested interest in retaining power. The Intelligence Branch holds power over the ODNI through their influence and partnership with the body that authorizes the power within it, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).

Factually, the modern intelligence apparatus uses checks and balances in their favor. The checks create silos of proprietary information, classified information, vaults of information that work around oversight issues. The silos are part of the problem.

Ironically, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created in the aftermath of 9/11/01 expressly to eliminate the silos of information which they felt led to a domestic terrorist attack that could have been prevented. The ODNI was created specifically upon the recommendation of the 9/11 commission.

The intent was to create a central hub of intelligence information, inside the Executive Branch, where the CIA, NSA, DoD, DoS, and DIA could deposit their unique intelligence products and a repository would be created so that domestic intelligence operations, like the DOJ and FBI could access them when needed to analyze threats to the U.S. This, they hoped, would ensure the obvious flags missed in the 9/11 attacks would not be missed again.

The DNI office created a problem for those who operate in the shadows of proprietary information. You’ll see how it was critical to install a person uniquely skilled in being an idiot, James Clapper, into that willfully blind role while intelligence operatives worked around the office to assemble the Intelligence Branch of Government.

• The last federal budget that flowed through the traditional budgetary process was signed into law in September of 2007 for fiscal year 2008 by George W. Bush. Every budget since then has been a fragmented process of continuing resolutions and individual spending bills.

Why does this matter? Because many people think defunding the Intelligence Community is a solution; it is not…. at least, not yet. Worse yet, the corrupt divisions deep inside the U.S. intelligence system can now fund themselves from multinational private sector partnerships (banks, corporations and foreign entities).

• When Democrats took over the House of Representatives in January 2007, they took office with a plan. Nancy Pelosi became Speaker, and Democrats controlled the Senate where Harry Reid was Majority Leader. Barack Obama was a junior senator from Illinois.

Pelosi and Reid intentionally did not advance a budget in 2008 (for fiscal year 2009) because their plan included installing Barack Obama (and all that came with him) with an open checkbook made even more lucrative by a worsening financial crisis and a process called baseline budgeting. Baseline budgeting means the prior fiscal year budget is accepted as the starting point for the next year budget. All previous expenditures are baked into the cake within baseline budgeting.

Massive bailouts preceded Obama’s installation due to U.S. economic collapse, and massive bailouts continued after his installation. This is the ‘never let a crisis go to waste’ aspect. TARP (Troubled Asset Recovery Program), auto bailouts (GM), and the massive stimulus spending bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, ie. those shovel ready jobs) were all part of the non budget spending. The federal reserve assisted with Quantitative Easing (QE1 and QE2) as congress passed various Porkulous spending bills further spending and replacing the formal budget process.

Note: There has never been a budget passed in the normal/traditional process since September of 2007.

• While Obama’s radical ‘transformation‘ was triggered across a broad range of government institutions, simultaneously spending on the U.S. military was cut, but spending on the intelligence apparatus expanded. We were all distracted by Obamacare, and the Republican party wanted to keep us that way. However, in the background there was a process of transformation taking place that included very specific action by Eric Holder and targeted effort toward the newest executive agency the ODNI.

The people behind Obama, those same people now behind Joe Biden, knew from years of strategic planning that ‘radical transformation’ would require control over specific elements inside the U.S. government. Eric Holder played a key role in his position as U.S. Attorney General in the DOJ.

AG Holder recruited ideologically aligned political operatives who were aware of the larger institutional objectives. One of those objectives was weaponizing the DOJ-National Security Division (DOJ-NSD) a division inside the DOJ that had no inspector general oversight. For most people the DOJ-NSD weaponization surfaced with a hindsight awakening of the DOJ-NSD targeting candidate Donald Trump many years later. However, by then the Holder crew had executed almost eight full years of background work.

• The second larger Obama/Holder objective was control over the FBI. Why was that important? Because the FBI does the domestic investigative work on anyone who needs or holds a security clearance. The removal of security clearances could be used as a filter to further build the internal ideological army they were assembling. Additionally, with new power in the ODNI created as a downstream consequence of the Patriot Act, new protocols for U.S. security clearances were easy to justify.

Carefully selecting fellow ideological travelers was facilitated by this filtration within the security clearance process. How does that issue later manifest?   Just look around at how politicized every intelligence agency has become, specifically including the FBI.

• At the exact same time this new background security clearance process was ongoing, again everyone distracted by the fight over Obamacare, inside the Department of State (Secretary Hillary Clinton) a political alignment making room for the next phase was being assembled. Names like Samantha Power, Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton were familiar on television while Lisa Monaco worked as a legal liaison between the Obama White House and Clinton State Department.

Through the Dept of State (DoS) the intelligence apparatus began working on their first steps to align Big Tech with a larger domestic institutional objective. Those of you who remember the “Arab Spring”, some say “Islamist Spring”, will remember it was triggered by Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo – his first foreign trip. The State Department worked with grassroots organizers (mostly Muslim Brotherhood) in Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Qatar and Libya. Obama leaned heavily on the organizational network of Turkish President Recep Erdogan for contacts and support.

Why does this aspect matter to us? Well, you might remember how much effort the Obama administration put into recruiting Facebook and Twitter as resources for the various mideast rebellions the White House and DoS supported. This was the point of modern merge between the U.S. intelligence community and Big Tech social media.

In many ways, the coordinated political outcomes in Libya and Egypt were the beta test for the coordinated domestic political outcomes we saw in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The U.S. intelligence community working with social media platforms and political operatives.

Overlaying all of that background activity was also a new alignment of the Obama-era intelligence apparatus with ideological federal “contractors“. Where does this contractor activity manifest? In the FISA Court opinion of Rosemary Collyer who cited the “interagency memorandum of understanding”, or MOU.

Hopefully, you can see a small part of how tentacled the system to organize/weaponize the intelligence apparatus was. None of this was accidental, all of this was by design, and the United States Senate was responsible for intentionally allowing most of this to take place.

That’s the 30,000/ft level backdrop history of what was happening as the modern IC was created. Next we will go into how all these various intelligence networks began working in unison and how they currently control all of the other DC institutions under them; including how they can carve out the President from knowing their activity.

♦ When Barack Obama was installed in January 2009, the Democrats held a 60 seat majority in the U.S. Senate. As the people behind the Obama installation began executing their longer-term plan, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was a tool to create the Intelligence Branch; it was not an unintentional series of events.

When Obama was installed, Dianne Feinstein was the Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), and Democrat operative Dan Jones was her lead staffer. Feinstein was completely controlled by those around her including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The CIA was in the process of turning over personnel following the Bush era, and as a result of a massive multi-year narrative of diminished credibility (Iraq WMD), a deep purge was underway. Obama/Holder were in the process of shifting intelligence alignment and the intensely political Democrat Leader Harry Reid was a key participant.

THE TRAP – Many people say that Congress is the solution to eliminating the Fourth and superseding Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. This is an exercise in futility because the Legislative Branch, specifically the SSCI, facilitated the creation of the Intelligence Branch. The SSCI cannot put the genie they created back in the bottle without admitting they too are corrupt; and the background story of their corruption is way too intense to be exposed now.

Every member of the SSCI is compromised in some controlling manner. Those Senators who disliked the control over them; specifically disliked because the risk of sunlight was tenuous and, well, possible; have either left completely or stepped down from the committee. None of the SSCI members past or present would ever contemplate saying openly what their tenure involved.

[Note: You might remember when Vice Chairman Mark Warner’s text messages surfaced, there was a controlled Republican SSCI member who came to his defense in February of 2018. It was not accidental that exact Senator later became the chair of the SSCI himself. That Republican Senator is Marco Rubio, now vice-chair since the Senate re-flipped back to the optics of Democrat control in 2021.]

All of President Obama’s 2009 intelligence appointments required confirmation from the Senate. The nominees had to first pass through the Democrat controlled SSCI, and then to a full Senate vote where Democrats held a 60 vote majority. Essentially, Obama got everyone he wanted in place easily. Rahm Emmanuel was Obama’s Chief of Staff, and Valerie Jarrett was Senior Advisor.

Tim Geithner was Treasury Secretary in 2010 when the joint DOJ/FBI and IRS operation to target the Tea Party took place after the midterm “shellacking” caused by the Obamacare backlash. Mitch McConnell was Minority Leader in the Senate but supported the targeting of the Tea Party as his Senate colleagues were getting primaried by an angry and effective grassroots campaign. McConnell’s friend, Senator Bob Bennett,  getting beaten in Utah was the final straw.

Dirty Harry and Mitch McConnell saw the TEA Party through the same prism. The TEA Party took Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts (Scott Brown); Sharon Angle was about to take out Harry Reid in Nevada; Arlen Spector was taken down in Pennsylvania; Senator Robert Byrd died; Senator Lisa Murkowski lost her primary to Joe Miller in Alaska; McConnell’s nominee Mike Castle lost to Christine O’Donnell in Delaware; Rand Paul won in Kentucky. This is the background. The peasants were revolting…. and visibly angry Mitch McConnell desperately made a deal with the devil to protect himself.

In many ways, the TEA Party movement was/is very similar to the MAGA movement. The difference in 2010 was the absence of a head of the movement, in 2015 Donald Trump became that head figure who benefited from the TEA Party energy. Trump came into office in 2017 with the same congressional opposition as the successful TEA Party candidates in 2011.

Republicans took control of the Senate following the 2014 mid-terms. Republicans took control of the SSCI in January 2015. Senator Richard Burr became chairman of the SSCI, and Dianne Feinstein shifted to Vice-Chair. Dirty Harry Reid left the Senate, and Mitch McConnell took power again.

Republicans were in control of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2015 when the Intelligence Branch operation against candidate Donald Trump was underway. [Feinstein’s staffer, Dan Jones, left the SSCI so he could act as a liaison and political operative between private-sector efforts (Fusion GPS, Chris Steele) and the SSCI.] The SSCI was a participant in that Fusion-GPS/Chris Steele operation, and as a direct consequence Republicans were inherently tied to the problem with President Trump taking office in January of 2017. Indiana Republican Senator Dan Coats was a member of the SSCI.

Bottom line…. When it came to the intelligence system targeting Donald Trump during the 2015/2016 primary, the GOP was just as much at risk as their Democrat counterparts.

When Trump unexpectedly won the 2016 election, the SSCI was shocked more than most. They knew countermeasures would need to be deployed to protect themselves from any exposure of their intelligence conduct. Dianne Feinstein stepped down, and Senator Mark Warner was elevated to Vice Chairman.

Indiana’s own Mike Pence, now Vice President, recommended fellow Hoosier, SSCI Senator Dan Coats, to become President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). [Apply hindsight here]

• To give an idea of the Intelligence Branch power dynamic, remind yourself how House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), Chairman Devin Nunes, tried to get access to the DOJ/FBI records of the FISA application used against the Trump campaign via Carter Page.

Remember, Devin Nunes only saw a portion of the FISA trail from his review of a Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) previously given to President Obama. Chairman Nunes had to review the PDB at the White House SCIF due to compartmented intelligence, another example of the silo benefit.

Remember the massive stonewalling and blocking of the DOJ/FBI toward Nunes? Remember the back and forth battle over declassification surrounding the Nunes memo?

Remember, after Nunes went directly to House Speaker Paul Ryan for help (didn’t get any), the DOJ only permitted two members from each party within the HPSCI to review the documents, and only at the DOJ offices of main justice?

Contrast that amount of House Intel Committee railroading and blocking by intelligence operatives in the DOJ, DOJ-NSD and FBI, with the simple request by Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Mark Warner asking to see the Carter Page FISA application and immediately a copy being delivered to him on March 17th 2017.

Can you see which intelligence committee is aligned with the deepest part of the deep state?

Oh, how quickly we forget.

The contrast of ideological alignment between the House, Senate and Intelligence Branch is crystal clear when viewed through the prism of cooperation. You can see which legislative committee holds the power and support of the Intelligence Branch. The Senate Intel Committee facilitates the corrupt existence of the IC Branch, so the IC Branch only cooperates with the Senate Intel Committee. It really is that simple.

• The Intelligence Branch carefully selects its own members by controlling how security clearances are investigated and allowed (FBI). The Intelligence Branch also uses compartmentalization of intelligence as a way to keep each agency, and each downstream branch of government (executive, legislative and judicial), at arms length as a method to stop anyone from seeing the larger picture of their activity. I call this the “silo effect“, and it is done by design.

I have looked at stunned faces when I presented declassified silo product from one agency to the silo customers of another. You would be astonished at what they don’t know because it is not in their ‘silo’.

Through the advise and consent rules, the Intelligence Branch uses the SSCI to keep out people they consider dangerous to their ongoing operations. Any appointee to the intelligence community must first pass through the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, before they get a full Senate vote. If the SSCI rejects the candidate, they simply refuse to take up the nomination. The president is then blocked from that appointment. This is what happened with President Trump over-and-over again.

• Additionally, the Intelligence Branch protects itself, and its facilitating allies through the formal classification process. The Intelligence Branch gets to decide unilaterally what information will be released and what information will be kept secret. There is no entity outside the Intelligence Branch, and yes that includes the President of the United States, who can supersede the classification authority of the Intelligence Branch. {Go Deep} and {Go Deep} This is something 99.9% of the people on our side get totally and frustratingly wrong.

No one can declassify, or make public, anything the Intelligence Branch will not agree to. Doubt this?  Ask Ric Grenell, John Ratcliffe, or even President Trump himself.

• The classification process is determined inside the Intelligence Branch, all by themselves. They get to choose what rank of classification exists on any work-product they create; and they get to decide what the classification status is of any work product that is created by anyone else. The Intelligence Branch has full control over what is considered classified information and what is not. The Intelligence Branch defines what is a “national security interest” and what is not. A great technique for hiding fingerprints of corrupt and illegal activity.

[For familiar reference see the redactions to Lisa Page and Peter Strzok text messages. The Intelligence Branch does all redactions.]

• Similarly, the declassification process is a request by an agency, even a traditionally superior agency like the President of the United States, to the Intelligence Branch asking for them to release the information. The Intelligence Branch again holds full unilateral control. If the head of the CIA refuses to comply with the declassification instruction of the President, what can the president do except fire him/her? {Again, GO DEEP} How does the President replace the non-compliant cabinet member?  They have to go through the SSCI confirmation.  See the problem?

Yes, there are ways to break up the Intelligence Branch, but they do not start with any congressional effort. As you can see above, the process is the flaw – not the solution. Most conservative pundits have their emphasis on the wrong syllable. Their cornerstone is false.

For their own self-preservation, the Intelligence Branch has been interfering in our elections for years. The way to tear this apart begins with STATE LEVEL election reform that blocks the Legislative Branch from coordinating with the Intelligence Branch.

The extreme federalism approach is critical and also explains why Joe Biden has instructed Attorney General Merrick Garland to use the full power of the DOJ to stop state level election reform efforts. The worry of successful state level election control is also why the Intelligence Branch now needs to support the federal takeover of elections.

Our elections have been usurped by the Intelligence Branch. Start with honest elections and we will see just how much Democrat AND Republican corruption is dependent on manipulated election results. Start at the state level. Start there…. everything else is downstream.

♦ People want examples, reference points for work the Intelligence Branch conducts, specifically how it protects itself.

Here is an example: Julian Assange.

Yes, the history of the U.S. national security apparatus goes back decades; however, the weaponization of that apparatus, the creation of an apex branch of government, the Intelligence Branch, originated –as we currently feel it– under President Barack Obama.

Obama took the foundational tools created by Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and used the intelligence system architecture to create a weapon for use in his fundamental transformation. An alliance of ideologues within government (intel community) and the private sector (big tech and finance) was assembled, and the largest government weapon was created. Think about this every time you take your shoes off at an airport.

After the weapon was assembled and tested (Arab Spring), the Legislative Branch was enjoined under the auspices of a common enemy, Donald J. Trump, an outsider who was a risk to every entity in the institutional construct of Washington DC. Trillions were at stake, and years of affluence and influence were at risk as the unholy alliance was put together.

To understand the risk that Julian Assange represented to U.S. Intelligence Branch interests, it is important to understand just how extensive the operations of the FBI/CIA were in 2016.

It is within the network of foreign and domestic intel operations where Intelligence Branch political tool, FBI Agent Peter Strzok, was working as a bridge between the CIA and FBI counterintelligence operations.

By now, people are familiar with the construct of CIA operations involving Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor generally identified as a western intelligence operative who was tasked by the FBI/CIA to run an operation against Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos in both Italy (Rome) and London. {Go Deep}

In a similar fashion, the FBI tasked U.S. intelligence asset Stefan Halper to target another Trump campaign official, Carter Page. Under the auspices of being a Cambridge Professor, Stefan Halper also targeted General Michael Flynn. Additionally, using assistance from a female FBI agent under the false name Azra Turk, Halper also targeted Papadopoulos.

The initial operations to target Flynn, Papadopoulos and Page were all based overseas. This seemingly makes the CIA exploitation of the assets and the targets much easier.

HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes outlined how very specific exculpatory evidence was known to the FBI and yet withheld from the FISA application used against Carter Page that also mentions George Papadopoulos. The FBI also fabricated information in the FISA.

However, there is an aspect to the domestic U.S. operation that also bears the fingerprints of the international intelligence apparatus; only this time, due to the restrictive laws on targets inside the U.S., the CIA aspect is less prominent. This is where FBI Agent Peter Strzok working for both agencies was important.

Remember, it’s clear in the text messages Strzok had a working relationship with what he called their “sister agency”, the CIA. Additionally, former CIA Director John Brennan has admitted Strzok helped write the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which outlines the Russia narrative; and Peter Strzok wrote the July 31st, 2016, “Electronic Communication” that originated FBI operation “Crossfire Hurricane.” Strzok immediately used that EC to travel to London to debrief allied intelligence officials connected to the Australian Ambassador to the U.K, Alexander Downer.

In short, Peter Strzok acted as a bridge between the CIA and the FBI. The perfect type of FBI career agent for the Intelligence Branch and CIA Director John Brennan to utilize.

Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson hired CIA Open Source analyst Nellie Ohr toward the end of 2015; at appropriately the same time as “FBI Contractors” were identified exploiting the NSA database and extracting information on a specific set of U.S. persons, the 2015 GOP candidates for President.

It was also Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson who was domestically tasked with a Russian lobbyist named Natalia Veselnitskaya. A little reported Russian Deputy Attorney General named Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was working double agents for the CIA and Kremlin. Karapetyan was directing the foreign operations of Natalia Veselnitskaya, and Glenn Simpson was organizing her inside the U.S.

Glenn Simpson managed Veselnitskaya through the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. However, once the CIA/Fusion-GPS operation using Veselnitskaya started to unravel with public reporting… back in Russia Deputy AG Karapetyan died in a helicopter crash.

Simultaneously timed in late 2015 through mid 2016, there was a domestic FBI operation using a young Russian named Maria Butina tasked to run up against republican presidential candidates. According to Patrick Byrne, Butina’s private sector handler [NOTE: remember, the public-private sector partnership], it was FBI agent Peter Strzok who was giving Patrick Byrne the instructions on where to send Butina. {Go Deep}

All of this context outlines the extent to which the FBI/CIA was openly involved in constructing a political operation that eventually settled upon anyone in candidate Donald Trump’s orbit. The international operations of the Intelligence Branch were directed by the FBI/CIA; and the domestic operations were coordinated by Peter Strzok operating with a foot in both agencies. [Strzok gets CIA service coin]

Recap: ♦Mifsud tasked against Papadopoulos (CIA). ♦Halper tasked against Flynn (CIA), Page (CIA), and Papadopoulos (CIA). ♦Azra Turk, pretending to be a Halper asst, tasked against Papadopoulos (FBI). ♦Veselnitskaya tasked against Donald Trump Jr (CIA, Fusion-GPS). ♦Butina tasked against Donald Trump Jr (FBI). All of these activities were coordinated.

Additionally, Christopher Steele was a British intelligence officer, hired by Fusion GPS to assemble and launder fraudulent intelligence information within his dossier. And we cannot forget Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch, who was recruited by Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe to participate in running an operation against the Trump campaign and create the impression of Russian involvement. However, Deripaska refused to participate.

All of this foreign and domestic engagement was directly controlled by collaborating U.S. intelligence agencies from inside the Intelligence Branch. And all of this coordinated activity was intended to give a specific Russia influence/interference impression.

♦ The key point of all that background context is to see how committed the Intelligence Branch was to the constructed narrative of Russia interfering with the 2016 election. The CIA, FBI, and by extension the DOJ and DOJ-NSD, put a hell of a lot of work into it.

We also know that John Durham looked at the construct of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA); and talked to CIA analysts who participated in the construct of the January 2017 report that bolstered the false appearance of Russian interference in the 2016 election. This is important because it ties in to the next part that involves Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

On April 11th, 2019, the Julian Assange indictment was unsealed in the EDVA. From the indictment we discover it was under seal since March 6th, 2018: (link to PDF)

On Tuesday April 15th more investigative material was released. Again, note the dates: Grand Jury, *December of 2017* This means FBI investigation prior to….

The FBI investigation took place prior to December 2017, and it was coordinated through the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) where Dana Boente was U.S. Attorney at the time. The grand jury indictment was sealed from March of 2018 until after Mueller completed his investigation, April 2019.

Why the delay?

What was the DOJ waiting for?

Here’s where it gets interesting….

The FBI submission to the Grand Jury in December of 2017 was four months after Congressman Dana Rohrabacher talked to Julian Assange in August of 2017: “Assange told a U.S. congressman … he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents … did not come from Russia.”

(August 2017, The Hill Via John Solomon) Julian Assange told a U.S. congressman on Tuesday he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents he published during last year’s election did not come from Russia and promised additional helpful information about the leaks in the near future.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who is friendly to Russia and chairs an important House subcommittee on Eurasia policy, became the first American congressman to meet with Assange during a three-hour private gathering at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the WikiLeaks founder has been holed up for years.

Rohrabacher recounted his conversation with Assange to The Hill.

“Our three-hour meeting covered a wide array of issues, including the WikiLeaks exposure of the DNC [Democratic National Committee] emails during last year’s presidential election,” Rohrabacher said, “Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails.”

Pressed for more detail on the source of the documents, Rohrabacher said he had information to share privately with President Trump. (read more)

Knowing how much effort the Intelligence Branch put into the false Russia collusion-conspiracy narrative, it would make sense for the FBI to take keen interest after this August 2017 meeting between Rohrabacher and Assange, monitor all activity, and why the FBI would quickly gather specific evidence (related to Wikileaks and Bradley Manning) for a grand jury by December 2017.

Within three months of the EDVA grand jury, the DOJ generated an indictment and sealed it in March 2018.

The DOJ sat on the indictment while the Mueller/Weissmann probe was ongoing.

As soon as the Mueller/Weissmann probe ended, on April 11th, 2019, a planned and coordinated effort between the U.K. and U.S. was executed; Julian Assange was forcibly arrested and removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and the EDVA indictment was unsealed (link).

As a person who has researched this fiasco; including the ridiculously false 2016 Russian hacking/interference narrative: “17 intelligence agencies”, Joint Analysis Report (JAR) needed for Obama’s anti-Russia narrative in December ’16; and then a month later the ridiculously political Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) in January ’17; this timing against Assange is too coincidental.

It doesn’t take a deep researcher to see the aligned Deep State motive to control Julian Assange. The Weissmann/Mueller report was dependent on Russia cybercrimes for justification, and that narrative was contingent on the Russia DNC hack story which Julian Assange disputes.

♦ This is critical. The Weissmann/Mueller report contains claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers as the central element to the Russia interference narrative in the U.S. election. This claim is directly disputed by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, as outlined during the Dana Rohrabacher interview, and by Julian Assange on-the-record statements.

The predicate for Robert Mueller’s investigation was specifically due to Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The fulcrum for this Russia interference claim is the intelligence community assessment; and the only factual evidence claimed within the ICA is that Russia hacked the DNC servers; a claim only made possible by relying on forensic computer analysis from Crowdstrike, a DNC and FBI contractor.

The CIA holds a self-interest in upholding the Russian hacking claim; the FBI holds an interest in maintaining that claim; the U.S. media hold an interest in maintaining that claim. All of the foreign countries whose intelligence apparatus participated with Brennan and Strzok also have a self-interest in maintaining that Russia hacking and interference narrative.

Julian Assange is the only person with direct knowledge of how Wikileaks gained custody of the DNC emails; and Assange has claimed he has evidence it was not from a hack.

This “Russian hacking” claim was ultimately important to the CIA, FBI, DOJ, ODNI and U.K intelligence apparatus, it forms the corner of their justification. With that level of importance, well, right there is the obvious motive to shut Julian Assange down as soon as intelligence officials knew the Weissmann/Mueller report was going to be public.

…. and that’s exactly what they did. They threw a bag over Assange.

♦ COLLAPSED OVERSIGHT – The modern system to ‘check’ the Executive Branch was the creation of the legislative “Gang of Eight,” a legislative oversight mechanism intended to provide a bridge of oversight between the authority of the intelligence community within the Executive Branch.

The Gang of 8 construct was designed to allow the President authority to carry out intelligence operations and provide the most sensitive notifications to a select group within Congress.

The Gang of 8 oversight is directed to the position, not the person, and consists of: (1) The Speaker of the House; (2) The Minority Leader of the House; (3) The Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, HPSCI; (4) The Ranking Member (minority) of the HPSCI; (5) The Leader of the Senate; (6) The Minority Leader of the Senate; (7) The Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, SSCI; and finally (8) the Vice-Chair of the SSCI.

Example: When the Chief Executive (the President) initiates an intelligence operation on behalf of the United States, the President triggers a “finding memo.” In essence, the instruction to the intel agency or agencies to authorize a covert operation. When that process takes place, the Go8 are the first people notified. Depending on the sensitivity of the operation, sometimes the G08 are notified immediately after the operation is conducted. The notification can be a phone call or an in-person briefing.

Because of the sensitivity of their intelligence information, the Gang of Eight hold security clearances that permit them to receive and review all intelligence operations. The intelligence community are also responsible for briefing the Go8 with the same information they use to brief the President.

The Go8 design is intended to put intelligence oversight upon both political parties in Congress; it is designed that way by informing the minority leaders of both the House and Senate as well as the ranking minority members of the SSCI and HPSCI. Under the concept, the President cannot conduct an intelligence operation; and the intelligence community cannot carry out intelligence gathering operations without the majority and minority parties knowing about it.

The modern design of this oversight system was done to keep rogue and/or corrupt intelligence operations from happening. However, as we shared in the preview to this entire discussion, the process was usurped during the Obama era. {GO DEEP}

Former FBI Director James Comey openly admitted to Congress on March 20, 2017, that the FBI, FBI Counterintelligence Division, DOJ and DOJ-National Security Division, together with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the CIA, had been conducting independent investigations of Donald Trump for over a year without informing the Go8. Comey justified the lack of informing Go8 oversight by saying, “because of the sensitivity of the matter.”

Stupidly, Congress never pressed James Comey on that issue. The arrogance was astounding, and the acceptance by Congress was infuriating. However, that specific example highlighted just how politically corrupt the system had become. In essence, Team Obama usurped the entire design of congressional oversight…. and Congress just brushed it off.

Keep in mind, Comey did not say the White House was unaware; in fact he said exactly the opposite, he said, “The White House was informed through the National Security Council,” (the NSC). The implication, the very direct and specific implication; the unavoidable implication and James Comey admission that everyone just brushed aside, was that President Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, was totally informed of the intelligence operation(s) against Donald Trump. After all, the NSC reports to the National Security Advisor.

Does the January 20, 2017, Susan Rice memo look different now?

Again, no one saw the immediate issue. What Comey just described on that March day in 2017 was the total usurpation of the entire reason the Gang of Eight exists; to eliminate the potential for political weaponization of the Intelligence Community by the executive branch. The G08 notifications to the majority and minority are specifically designed to make sure what James Comey admitted to doing was never supposed to happen.

Team Obama carried out a political operation using the intelligence community and the checks-and-balances in the system were intentionally usurped. This is an indisputable fact.

Worse still, the entire legislative branch of Congress, which specifically includes the Republicans that now controlled the House and Senate, did nothing. They just ignored what was admitted. The usurpation was willfully ignored.  The mechanism of the G08 was bypassed without a twitch of condemnation or investigation…. because the common enemy was Donald Trump.

This example highlights the collapse of the system. Obama, the executive branch, collapsed the system by usurping the process; in essence the process became the bigger issue and the lack of immediate legislative branch reaction became evidence of open acceptance. The outcomes of the usurpation played out over the next four years, Donald J. Trump was kneecapped and lost his presidency because of it. However, the bigger issue of the collapse still exists.

The downstream consequence of the Legislative Branch accepting the Executive Branch usurpation meant both intelligence committees were compromised. Additionally, the leadership of both the House and Senate were complicit. Think about this carefully. The Legislative Branch allowance of the intelligence usurpation meant the Legislative Branch was now subservient to the Intelligence Branch.

That’s where we are.

Right now.

That’s where we are.

Term-3 Obama is now back in the White House with Joe Biden.

Term-1 and Term-2 Obama usurped the ‘check and balance‘ within the system and weaponized the intelligence apparatus. During Trump’s term that weaponization was covered up by a compliant congress, and not a single member of the oversight called it out. Now, Term-3 Obama steps back in to continue the cover up and continue the weaponization.

Hopefully, you can now see the scale of the problem that surrounds us with specific citation for what has taken place. What I just explained to you above is not conspiracy theory, it is admitted fact that anyone can look upon. Yet….

Have you seen this mentioned anywhere? Have you seen this called out by anyone in Congress? Have you seen anyone in media (ally or adversary) call this out? Have you seen any member of the Judicial Branch stand up and say wait, what is taking place is not okay? Have you seen a single candidate for elected office point this out? Have you seen anyone advising a candidate point this out?

This is our current status. It is not deniable. The truth exists regardless of our comfort.

Not a single person in power will say openly what has taken place. They are scared of the Fourth Branch. The evidence of what has taken place is right there in front of our face. The words, actions and activities of those who participated in this process are not deniable.

There are only two members of the Gang of Eight who have existed in place from January 2007 (the real beginning of Obama’s term, two years before he took office when the Congress flipped). Only two members of the G08 have been consistently in place from January of 2007 to right now, today. All the others came and went, but two members of the Gang of Eight have been part of that failed and collapsed oversight throughout the past 15 years, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell.

♦ TECHNOLOGY – On a global scale – the modern intelligence gathering networks are now dependent on data collection to execute their intelligence missions. In the digital age nations have been executing various methods to gather that data. Digital surveillance has replaced other methods of interception. Those surveillance efforts have resulted in a coalescing of regional data networks based on historic multi-national relationships.

We have a recent frame of reference for the “U.S. data collection network” within the NSA. Through the allied process the Five Eyes nations all rely on the NSA surveillance database (U.K, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and U.S.) The NSA database provides the digital baseline for intelligence operations in defense of our allies. The portals into the NSA database are essentially an assembly of allies in like-minded ideological connection to the United States.

Unfortunately, there have been some revelations about the NSA database being used to monitor our allies, like in the example of Germany and surveillance on Angela Merkel’s phone. As long as “the good guys” are operating honorably, allies of the United States can feel confident about having protection from the NSA surveillance of global digital data. We warn our friends if we detect something dangerous etc.

The U.S. has nodes on communication pipelines to intercept and extract data. We have also launched hundreds, perhaps thousands, of satellites to conduct surveillance and gather up data. All of this data is fed into the NSA database where it is monitored (presumably) as a national security mechanism, and in defense of our allies.

However, what about data collection or data networks that are outside the NSA database? What do our enemies do? The NSA database is just one intelligence operation of digital surveillance amid the entire world, and we do not allow access by adversaries we are monitoring. So what do they do? What do our allies do who might not trust the United States due to past inconsistencies, ie. the Middle East?

The answers to those questions highlight other data collection networks. So a brief review of the major players is needed.

♦ CHINA – China operates their own database. They, like the NSA, scoop up data for their system. Like us, China launches satellites and deploys other electronic data collection methods to download into their database. This is why the issues of electronic devices manufactured in China becomes problematic. Part of the Chinese data collection system involves the use of spyware, hacking and extraction.

Issues with Chinese communication company Huawei take on an added dimension when you consider the goal of the Chinese government to conduct surveillance and assemble a network of data to compete with the United States via the NSA. Other Chinese methods of surveillance and data-collection are less subversive, as in the examples of TicTok and WeChat. These are Chinese social media companies that are scraping data just like the NSA scrapes data from Facebook, Twitter and other Silicon Valley tech companies. [ Remember, the Intelligence Branch is a public-private partnership. ]

♦ RUSSIA – It is very likely that Russia operates their own database. We know Russia launches satellites, just like China and the USA, for the same purposes. Russia is also very proficient at hacking into other databases and extracting information to store and utilize in their own network. The difference between the U.S., China and Russia is likely that Russia spends more time on the hacking aspect because they do not generate actual technology systems as rapidly as the U.S. and China.

The most recent database creation is an outcome of an ally having to take action because they cannot rely on the ideology of the United States remaining consistent, as the administrations ping-pong based on ideology.

♦ SAUDI ARABIA – Yes, in 2016 we discovered that Saudi Arabia was now operating their own intelligence data-gathering operation. It would make sense, given the nature of the Middle East and the constant fluctuations in political support from the United States. It is a lesson the allied Arab community and Gulf Cooperation Council learned quickly when President Obama went to Cairo in 2009 and launched the Islamist Spring (Arab Spring) upon them.

I have no doubt the creation of the Saudi intelligence network was specifically because the Obama administration started supporting radical Islamists within the Muslim Brotherhood, and threw fuel on the fires of extremism all over the Arab world.

Think about it., What would you do if you were Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, Jordan, Oman or Yemen and you knew the United States could just trigger an internal uprising of al-Qaeda, ISIS and the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood to seek your destruction?

Without a doubt, those urgent lessons from 2009, 2010, 2011 triggered the formation of the Arab Intelligence Network as a network to defend itself with consistency. They assembled the network and activated it in 2017 as pictured above.

♦ Israel – Along a similar outlook to the Arab network, no doubt Israel operates an independent data collection system as a method of protecting itself from ever-changing U.S. politics amid a region that is extremely hostile to its very existence. Like the others, Israel launches proprietary satellites, and we can be sure they use covert methods to gather electronic data just like the U.S. and China.

As we have recently seen in the Pegasus story, Israel creates spyware programs that are able to track and monitor cell phone communications of targets. The spyware would not work unless Israel had access to some network where the phone meta-data was actually stored. So yeah, it makes sense for Israel to operate an independent intelligence database.

♦ Summary: As we understand the United States Intelligence Branch of government as the superseding entity that controls the internal politics of our nation, we also must consider that multiple nations have the same issue. There are major intelligence networks around the world beside the NSA “Five-Eyes” database. China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel all operate proprietary databases deploying the same tools and techniques for assembly.

The geopolitical conflict that has always existed has now shifted into a digital battle-space. The Intelligence Agencies from these regions are now operating as the backbone of the government that uses them, and has become dependent on them. [<- Reread that].

Once you accept the digital-era intelligence apparatus of China, Russia, Saudi-Arabia, The United States and Israel, are now the primary national security mechanisms for stabilization of government; then you accept the importance of those intelligence operations.

Once you understand how foundational those modern intelligence operations have become for the stability and continuity of those governments…… then you begin to understand just how the United States intelligence community became more important than the government that created it.

♦ Public Private Partnership – The modern Fourth Branch of Government is only possible because of a Public-Private partnership with the intelligence apparatus. You do not have to take my word for it, the partnership is so brazen they have made public admissions.

The biggest names in Big Tech announced in June their partnership with the Five Eyes intelligence network, ultimately controlled by the NSA, to: (1) monitor all activity in their platforms; (2) identify extremist content; (3) look for expressions of Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE); and then, (4) put the content details into a database where the Five Eyes intelligence agencies (U.K., U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand) can access it.

Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft are all partnering with the intelligence apparatus. It might be difficult to fathom how openly they admit this, but they do. Look at this sentence in the press release (emphasis mine):

[…] “The Group will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.”

Think about that sentence structure very carefully. They are “adding to” the preexisting list…. admitting the group (aka Big Tech) already have access to the the intelligence-sharing database… and also admitting there is a preexisting list created by the Five Eyes consortium.

Obviously, who and what is defined as “extremist content” will be determined by the Big Tech insiders themselves. This provides a gateway, another plausible deniability aspect, to cover the Intelligence Branch from any oversight.

When the Intelligence Branch within government wants to conduct surveillance and monitor American citizens, they run up against problems due to the Constitution of the United States. They get around those legal limitations by sub-contracting the intelligence gathering, the actual data-mining, and allowing outside parties (contractors) to have access to the central database.

The government cannot conduct electronic searches (4th amendment issue) without a warrant; however, private individuals can search and report back as long as they have access. What is being admitted is exactly that preexisting partnership. The difference is that Big Tech will flag the content from within their platforms, and now a secondary database filled with the extracted information will be provided openly for the Intelligence Branch to exploit.

The volume of metadata captured by the NSA has always been a problem because of the filters needed to make the targeting useful. There is a lot of noise in collecting all data that makes the parts you really want to identify more difficult to capture. This new admission puts a new massive filtration system in the metadata that circumvents any privacy protections for individuals.

Previously, the Intelligence Branch worked around the constitutional and unlawful search issue by using resources that were not in the United States. A domestic U.S. agency, working on behalf of the U.S. government, cannot listen on your calls without a warrant. However, if the U.S. agency sub-contracts to say a Canadian group, or foreign ally, the privacy invasion is no longer legally restricted by U.S. law.

What was announced in June 2021 is an alarming admission of a prior relationship along with open intent to define their domestic political opposition as extremists.

July 26 (Reuters) – A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias, the group told Reuters.

Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos – often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence – and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.

The firms, which include Twitter (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube, share “hashes,” unique numerical representations of original pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other platforms use these to identify the same content on their own sites in order to review or remove it. (read more)

The influence of the Intelligence Branch now reaches into our lives, our personal lives. In the decades before 9/11/01 the intelligence apparatus intersected with government, influenced government, and undoubtedly controlled many institutions with it. The legislative oversight function was weak and growing weaker, but it still existed and could have been used to keep the IC in check. However, after the events of 9/11/01, the short-sighted legislative reactions opened the door to allow the surveillance state to weaponize.

After the Patriot Act was triggered, not coincidentally only six weeks after 9/11, a slow and dangerous fuse was lit that ends with the intelligence apparatus being granted a massive amount of power. The problem with assembled power is always what happens when a Machiavellian network takes control over that power and begins the process to weaponize the tools for their own malicious benefit. That is exactly what the installation of [foreign-born] Barack Obama was all about.

The Obama network took pre-assembled intelligence weapons we should never have allowed to be created, and turned those weapons into tools for his radical and fundamental change. The target was the essential fabric of our nation. Ultimately, this corrupt political process gave power to create the Fourth Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. From that perspective the fundamental change was successful.

♦ WHAT NOW? There is a way to stop and deconstruct the Intelligence Branch, but it requires some outside-the-box thinking and reliance on the Constitution as a tool to radically change one element within government. In the interim, we must remain focused on the three tiers that we need for success.

• Tier One is “tactical civics” at a local level. Engaged and active citizen participation at the community, city, town and hamlet level of society. This is what might be described as grassroots level, school board level; city council level; county commissioner level.

• Tier Two is “extreme federalism” at a state level. Engaged and active citizen participation through your State House and State Senate representative. This is state level assembly and action demands upon the State House, State Senate and State Governor.

• Tier Three the challenge of “federal offices” on a national level. This is where CTH outlines a singular action that can be taken upstream that allows the first two tiers to retake control over federal offices. This is where we throw the One Ring into the fire of Mordor. {Go Deep}

I am confident that ultimately “We The People” will win.  How we can execute the “One Ring” solution is more challenging; in the interim, tactical civics and extreme federalism are doable right now, in this next 2022 election cycle. (read more)

It looks like “Joe Biden’s” effort to change the channel is working. Even so, there is some interesting Covid-19 news, like: the whole endless, heartbreaking, demoralizing episode is winding down. Whoa! That’s a shock! What will Western Civ do without it? In the UK, Boris Johnson put a stop to all restrictions, mask mandates, and vaxx passports, just like that (snap) on Wednesday. Then France announced it would lift most Covid-19 restrictions in February, which is a little more than a week from now, for those of you who haven’t mastered the new maff. Then, on Thursday, Austria’s parliament voted to approve mandatory vaccinations for everybody in the country — say, what? — leading the casual observer to wonder whether half of everybody in that country is maybe super pissed-off at their government, seeing how France and the UK are going the opposite way.

Let’s be honest: it’s getting laughable to seriously advocate vaxxing up a whole goshdarn population when it’s perfectly obvious now that the vaxxes don’t work and are making a lot of people sick with everything that can go wrong in a human body, plus Covid-19. Are nations such as Austria and Germany not looking plumb insane now? Can the European Union endure such wildly contradictory policy among its member states, and not make itself ridiculous? Let’s just say, the situation in Europe is in flux and events are moving fast.

Here in our exceptional nation, it is lately discovered — to the chagrin of the elite managerial classes — that The Science personified by Dr. Anthony Fauci is not medical science after all but rather political science.  Ah! I see now why so much confusion has been sown over Dr. Fauci’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic. If he actually represented medical science, he might not have killed several hundred thousand people in this country by withholding and suppressing effective treatments and promoting deadly vaccines. He might not have disgraced the entire medical establishment and half-wrecked the system it works in. But, to paraphrase another eminent political scientist of yore, Josef Stalin, while one death is a tragedy, a half-million is a mere statistic. There’s science anyone can understand!

— James Howard Kunstler, 21 January 2022

Australia’s Government Is From the Dark Ages

On July 27, 1656, senior leaders of the Jewish community in Amsterdam issued a writ of cherem— the Hebrew term for expulsion and excommunication.

Their target was a young, 23-year old Dutch/Portuguese intellectual named Baruch Spinoza, himself a Jew, whose dangerous crime was questioning the unquestionable teachings of the faith.

The Jewish elders proclaimed that “The Lord will rage against this man and… blot out his name from under heaven” and ordered that no Jew should communicate with him, offer him shelter, give him money, or read any of his writings.

A few years later, the Catholic Church followed suit and added all of Spinoza’s works to its Index of Banned Books. This makes Baruch Spinoza one of the few people in history to be banished from both the Jewish and Catholic religions.

His philosophy was widely misunderstood at the time. Everyone accused him of being an atheist, which was one of the worst things you could call someone in the 1600s.

But he wasn’t actually an atheist. Spinoza’s works were an attempt for him to reconcile his faith with certain religious teachings that were illogical, self-contradictory, or refuted by science.

He wrote extensively about his “intellectual love of God”. But simply for expressing intellectual independence, Spinoza was expelled from his own Jewish community.

Now, Novak Djokovic is hardly a Baruch Spinoza. But it is truly bizarre in the year 2022 to see someone be expelled from an advanced western democracy simply for expressing intellectual independence.

Just to catch you up, Novak Djokovic is a professional Tennis player from Serbia who is considered one of the all-time greats in the sport. He’s currently ranked #1 in the world and holds an incredible number of records in professional tennis.

But Djokovic is unvaccinated against Covid-19, and that makes him a heretic.

He recently attempted to travel to Melbourne, in the prison colony of Australia, to play in the Australian Open tennis tournament there. But upon arrival, Djokovic was immediately detained by immigration authorities.

After a ridiculous nine days of legal back-and-forth, Djokovic was deported from the country. And under current law, he is barred from entering Australia for a minimum of three years.

It’s worth noting that the Australian government had issued an entry visa to Djokovic as recently as mid-November, so it’s not like he tried to enter the country illegally.

Plus they knew at the time that he was unvaccinated; Djokovic has been public about his stance.

Yet the government only kicked up a fuss (and canceled his visa) once he had already arrived.

In support of their decision to cancel his visa, the government claimed that Djokovic was a danger to society because his presence could incite civil unrest.

Naturally they provided no evidence to support this assertion. It’s true because the government says it’s true.

But even if it were true, this particular argument is a bizarre ‘pre-crime’ condemnation of Djokovic; the Australian government has peered into its crystal ball and concluded that other people will engage in civil unrest. Therefore their solution is to punish a tennis player who hasn’t done anything wrong.

Makes perfect sense.

Their next argument, naturally, is that Djokovic is a danger to public health. Because he is unvaccinated, they claim that he can carry and spread the virus to others.

Obviously this is true. And yet, as all the data show, vaccinated people can also carry and transmit the virus. Vaccinated people can become infected and hospitalized. They can even die.

Vaccination rates in Australia are among the highest in the world, and they’re feverishly (no pun intended) administering booster shots to the population.

Yet despite this adherence to public health authorities, cases are surging to record highs. In the last 24 hours there were 55,232 new Covid cases in Australia.

By comparison, Australia had 10 (yes, ten) new daily cases a year ago in January 2021, just prior to the vaccine rollout.

But now that 92.6% of eligible Australians have been vaccinated, the infection rate has increased more than 5,000x from a year ago.

Obviously vaccinated people are transmitting the virus to other vaccinated people.

Yet the government seems to be asserting that only unvaccinated people like Djokovic can spread Omicron… which is a very flat-earth, anti-science view.

But the Australian government’s dumbest reason to expel Djokovic was that his presence in the country may increase vaccine or booster hesitancy.

This one is really extraordinary.

Let’s assume for a moment that their point is true, i.e. Djokovic could infect Australian people with his dangerous ideology.

Even so, the Australian government apparently believes that ideas only spread through physical contact.

In other words, these politicians think that Australian residents will only become vaccine hesitant if Djokovic is physically present in Australia, as if he’s going to sneeze and his ideas will spread like Omicron droplets.

But as long as they keep him out of the country, then Australians will be sufficiently socially distanced from his ideas and no one will be exposed to his heresy.

Just like the rest of their arguments, this notion is completely absurd. And yet it was their ‘rational’ basis for punishing someone whose only transgression was exercising independent thought.

Back in the 1600s (and prior), anyone who disagreed with the civil or religious authorities was branded a heretic. And their censorship was especially brutal; people were expelled, imprisoned, tortured, and even put to death for questioning authority and expressing a different view.

We have once again returned to medieval intolerance for ideological differences.

Australia’s government is a sad example of this Dark Ages-era mentality– that they (and they alone) dictate truth. And anyone who questions their supreme wisdom must be banished.

Back then people faced Inquisition, witch hunts, and public beheading. Today it’s the Twitter mob, cancel culture, and expulsion.

It’s not quite as bloody, but still ruinous. And it’s reason enough to give very serious consideration to your Plan B. (read more)

We Are All Djokovic, Now

When I’ve talked in the past about the patchwork tyranny post COVID-9/11, I had more mundane things in mind than the fate of a major tennis star.

Novak Djokovic was deported from Australia on Sunday after his appeal to reinstate his visa failed. And it failed not for health reasons but for political ones.

To me, the kinds of terrible rules put in place for ‘public safety’ always conjure up images of casual oppression. Endless videos of pathetic public servants intimidating priests in churches or police arresting pub owners for serving willing patrons.

But it goes far deeper than that. It’s impossible to even conceive of the ways petty bureaucrats and middle managers around the world have destroyed the lives of ordinary people simply trying to get through the day because of a flu.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 insanity Australia has been the poster child for this kind of thoughtless crime against common decency.

Australian Immigration Minister Alex Hawke’s decision to revoke Djokovic’s visa was made for political reasons. He didn’t try to hide it. If anything, he was proud of this decision.

Hawke said he accepted Djokovic’s recent Covid-19 infection meant he was a “negligible risk to those around him”, but that he was “perceived by some as a talisman of a community of anti-vaccine sentiment”.

“I consider that Mr Djokovic’s ongoing presence in Australia may lead to an increase in anti-vaccination sentiment generated in the Australian community, potentially leading to an increase in civil unrest of the kind previously experienced in Australia with rallies and protests which may themselves be a source of community transmission.

“Mr Djokovic is … a person of influence and status.

“Having regard to … Mr Djokovic’s conduct after receiving a positive Covid-19 result, his publicly stated views, as well as his unvaccinated status, I consider that his ongoing presence in Australia may encourage other people to disregard or act inconsistently with public health advice and policies in Australia.”

These are the words of the committed totalitarian. He hides it behind his public responsibilities, in this case the health status of an entire nation. If he’s not being controlled by outside forces (yeah, right) then he’s been infected with that dangerous solipsism which comes with this much raw power.

That corruption cannot be avoided.

But Hawke’s decision stems from Australia’s backing themselves into the corner over COVID-9/11 policy. They cannot be seen as backing down for anyone, especially someone like Djokovic.

To do so, as Hawke points out, would invite questioning the policy. And their policy is sacrosanct.

However, having admitted that Djokovic posed almost no threat of spreading COVID-9/11 the only thing at stake was the Australian government’s power.

This type of decision reveals 1) how deeply unpopular the COVID-9/11 rules are in Australia and 2) how weak the Aussie government’s hold over its people really is.

They could have weathered this if they had just quietly let Djokovic into the country to compete. They could have spun it had they wanted to.

They chose escalating the standoff to make an example of him to the unvaxxed population. There is no hope. You will submit. If we can humiliate Djokovic, just imagine what we can do to you.

And they revealed just how desperate they are.

Bureaucrats like Hawke have no sense of the politics of their decisions. They are order-takers, not order-makers. He was ordered to do this. When this standoff started it was during the height of the big push to drive fear over the Omicron variant of COVID-9/11.

That rollout failed spectacularly.

Omicron has flared up and out so quickly this affair now looks like the most insane application of government paranoia this side of Pyongyang.

Those that started this standoff created the mess and didn’t have the sense to clean it up.

Because they insist on building trailer parks in the face of a Cat-5 hurricane of public anger.

They hoped to send the message that no one can escape the jab. The Davos agenda of health passes and total technocratic control is inevitable. It’s the EU variant of the virus which Hawke’s immigration policies couldn’t stop coming to Australia.

What they wound up with is a whole lotta people shaking their heads.

But, don’t think for a second Australia is done sending messages to the untermenschen. Now, after he’s been deported, barred from competing and earning his living, Djokovic is liable for all the court costs associated with this decision.

Those costs are estimated to be $500,000.

The three judge panel that upheld the lower court ruling avoided any responsibility in the matter, neatly throwing the decision right back on Minister Hawke. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, clearly one of the people pushing this disaster behind the scenes, also left Hawke out to dry.

Next up for Djokovic will a standoff with France over the French Open. France and Davos will hound him until he submits because they think he cares more about his 21st Grand Slam title than he does his own health. It guess they didn’t get his message during the Australian affair.

But their message is very clear. We are in charge. We can make whatever rules we deem necessary. If you challenge them not only will we deny your challenge on arbitrary grounds but we’ll bankrupt you in the process.

And here I thought we in the post-enlightenment West could petition our governments over unjust laws. I thought this was the first world and not some tin pot dictatorship of thin-lipped, fat-headed midwits?

Only the most insane people are cheering this decision today. They are a part of the 29% of Democrats in the US who believe the unvaxxed should have their children taken from them. Sadly, there are still too many in the thrall of the COVID-9/11 mind virus.

But, if you didn’t get the message before the persecution of Novak Djokovic, I hope you get it now. And I hope he continues to be an example for the rest of us. (read more)

They are making an example of Novak Djokovic. Here’s why.

Tennis star Novak Djokovic is being deported from Australia, after losing his final appeal the ATP’s top-ranked player will not be allowed to defend his Australian Open title.

It was reported this morning that an Australian court had refused Djokovic’s appeal against the cancellation of his visa, and as such he’s being put on a plane and flown out of the country.

To be clear: This is all because he’s not “vaccinated” against Covid19, and vocally speaks out against the practice. The government have clearly and publicly admitted as much…but we’ll get to that.

The rejection of Djokovic’s medical exemption and subsequent deportation has been accompanied by a wave of vitriol in the press the likes of which we have rarely seen.

One Australian sports presenter was “accidentally” recorded calling him a “lying, sneaky arsehole” in a video that was later “leaked” to the press.

The Spectator has one piece which is nothing more than a slew of ad hominem and mockery, against not just Djokovic but all “anti-vaxxers” and “conspiracy theorists”, calling the Serbian a “conspiracy super-spreader”. They have another blaming his “arrogance for his downfall”.

The Daily Mail ran a story headlined: “Welcome to the Wacky World of Novak Djokovic… and meet his equally wacky wife!”, and two more opinion pieces claiming his arrogance has “trashed his reputation” and calling him “a loser”.

The Guardian‘s Australian Political Correspondent Sarah Martin defends the decision and jokingly refers to it as a “no dickheads” immigration policy, attacking Djokovic’s “anti-science god complex” and calling him an “all-round jerk”.

The childish name-calling just doesn’t end. Even his fellow players are sticking the boot in.

Stefanos Tsitsipas attacked Djokovic for attempting to “play by his own rules”, adding “A very small minority chose to follow their own way. It makes the majority look like they are all fools”, which is at least true, but not in the way he means it.

Spanish star Rafael Nadal said Djokovic should just follow the rules like everyone else, perhaps flashing the kind of attitude which allowed a fascist dictator to stay in power in his country for 40 years.

Some players, at least, have come to Djokovic’s defense, including Australia’s own Nick Kyrgios, who has said he is “ashamed” of the way Australia has handled the situation and chastised other players for not showing solidarity with Djokovic.

But why is this happening? Why are they trying to punish such a public figure, and why now?

Well, firstly, I’m not sure it is about punishing Djokovic, and not just because getting to leave Australia is an odd thing to be considered any kind of punishment these days.

Rather, it’s about the performance of punishing him. It’s about making an example of him. Not so much preventing him from playing, as much as denying him a platform.

The Australian government basically admits that in their legal justification for cancelling the visa.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Djokovic had been barred from entry for “breaching the rules…it’s as simple as that.” But he is either mistaken or lying, as he directly contradicts the case presented to the appeal court by the government.

Yes, the visa was first cancelled on a technicality about incorrect information but, a judge overruled that decision, allowing Djokovic to enter the country.

That’s when Immigration Minister Alex Hawke stepped in to personally revoke the visa under section 133 of the Immigration Act 1958.

Under this (worryingly vague) legislation, the Immigration Minister is granted the power to cancel any visa at all, if:

the Minister is satisfied that it would be in the public interest to cancel the visa.

This was the argument put to the appeals court, that the minister can expel anyone, for anything, if he believes it to be in the best interests of the public.

That’s public interest, NOT public health.

Hawke admits in his written statement that Djokovic presents a “negligible risk of Covid19 infection” to those around him. So it’s nothing to do with protecting people from infection or stopping the spread of the virus.

Public statements from officials suggest that they consider any “anti-vaxxer” to be a threat to the public interest by undermining the vaccination programme. Thus they can justify barring entry to Djokovic (or, it should be said, any other “anti-vaxxer”) under the guise of “public interest”.

It’s about control, it almost always is.

In short, the government are scared that Djokovic’s very presence in the country is a threat to their neo-fascist lockdown.

If you look closely at the media messaging, there’s more than a little fear behind the wall of abuse and mockery.

Article after article is at pains to point out that “the majority of normal Australians want the Joker gone”, or some variation on that sentiment. Somewhat desperately selling the line that nobody agrees with, or supports, Djokovic’s position.

A statement which is given the lie by the regular huge protests taking place all across Australia’s major cities (like this one, just this weekend, in Sydney).

The Australian government are worried they’ve turned their country into a powder keg of public resentment, and that the slightest social spark could set it off. Increasing the size of the (already huge) protests against the lockdowns and vaccine mandates, maybe even tipping the country into full-blown chaos.

One of the Spectator articles mentions that Australians have been living in a “police state” for two years, and then vaguely references the subsequent public anger, even whilst attempting to downplay it, misrepresent its cause, and turn it against the unvaccinated.

Australia has fallen. Peace, prosperity and freedom have been sacrificed on the altar of “safety”, and Covid “vaccination” has become a quasi-religious rite in their country, even more so than the rest of the world.

As such, the unvaccinated are slandered, punished, threatened and othered at every turn. Locked down, locked up and locked out.

Can you only imagine what could happen if people found out it was all for nothing? Or that the heaven-sent vaccines aren’t the magical solution to all that ails us?

In this kind of political climate they simply can’t afford to have an “anti-vaxxer” on national television, healthy and athletic and winning championships against a field of vaccinated rivals.

Especially when three vaccinated players have already dropped out with “breathing difficulties”

Before anyone accuses me of a surfeit of cynicism, let’s review the actual words of Alex Hawke from the appeal procedure [our emphasis]:

I consider that Mr Djokovic’s ongoing presence in Australia may lead to an increase in anti-vaccination sentiment generated in the Australian community, potentially leading to an increase in civil unrest of the kind previously experienced in Australia

Elsewhere Djokovic is described as a “talisman of a community of anti-vaccine sentiment”.

This kind of brutal treatment of publicly unvaccinated famous faces will likely only intensify. It’s already spreading from country to country, with France announcing Djokovic will not be allowed to defend his French Open title unless he gets vaccinated.

It seems pretty clear that the public shaming of Djokovic is a power-play to secure what they perceive as their own tenuous grip on the narrative, one that could have far-reaching consequences moving forward.

Consider, Djokovic is not barred from entry just for being unvaccinated, but also because he has publicly spoken out against vaccination.

Australia is now not only requiring you be “fully vaccinated” to enter the country, but has barred someone for even expressing anti-vaccine sentiment.

It’s no longer enough to conform by action, you must now conform by speech.

Next is thought, but even they would never try to legislate against that…right? (read more)

Australia Is Safe Again From Mortal Danger

Not Since Imperial Japan Have They Been So Threatened Down Under

Achtung Regeln!
Rules are rules and today the brave people of Australia should be thankful the Australian government in all its wisdom is willing to enforce those rational and carefully thought out rules against a mortal danger that had infiltrated their nation and threated their compliant populace as a walking vector of negligence and disobedience.

Not since Imperial Japan threatened to invade the continental former penal colony have the courageous people of Australia been so close to existential devastation. Not since they handed over their arms to the government in 1996 because the government in all its insight and wisdom told them it was for their own safety have they been so close to grave danger and existential harm.

Who does this Serbian super spreader think he is getting his visa approved before his journey and showing up without the vaccine, the one and only effective miracle to keep all Australians safe? The arrogance of a man to think the rules do not apply to him just because he’s seen hundreds of athletes dropping dead by coincidence and dares mistake it for the safe and noble vaccine. How dare he!

How dare he lie on his visa application form. He was seen on social media with the sniffles in Spain on December 16 with other people and the impertinence to lower his mask for a photo shoot, then travelled with the sniffles and maybe even a headache to Serbia to spend Christmas with family and back to Spain again! How many people did he endanger with his traveling sniffles antics? And he has the audacity to think he can get away with it and endanger an entire continent just because he’s the nine time champion of their largest sporting event and has brought the nation hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. No man is above the servitude and obedience of the common Australian, certainly not a Serbian Sniffles Super Spreader who threatens to overturn the highly effective zero covid policy the nation has embraced to great success!

The Australian immigration minister canceled his visa after it was approved while he was abroad to make a political example out of the heretic after he landed on the grounds that the Serb’s presence in Australia might be a risk to the health and "good order" of the Australian public and "may be counterproductive to efforts at vaccination by others in Australia." Amen minister. No sane country can have their asylees recognize their status as trapped in the Cuckoo’s nest of a continent with the presence of a foreign virus among the clean and healthy subservient population, 92% of who did “their duty” for “the common good”. It would not be able to maintain “good order” if people recognized their status as slaves, mentally and physically to the state.

Medication time gentlemen. Medication time. Time for your medication.

Mr. McMurphy your medication.

What’s in the horse pill?

It’s just medicine, it’s good for you.

Yeah, well I don’t like the idea of taking something if I don’t know what it is.

Sportsball Philosophers
In the world of sportsball reporters are the most astute and prescient in their analysis of everything. This is due to their erudite mind required for understanding the complex intricacies of sportsball games, skills, strategies and brinksmanship. The sportsball reporter is also a deep thinker, a kind of sportsball philosopher who provides us with the wisdom and insight necessary to understand the world today.

As this sportsball philospher has pointed out the dangerous indolence of a selfish sportsball star is a sign that these stars continue to fail us all. We look to the sportsball stars around us for guidance and wisdom and truth and then they go and do things like travel with the sniffles and lower their paper mask for photo ops and it’s so disconcerting for our world already so bereft of true leadership. Thankfully there are some brave and inspiring sportsballers still out there to show us the way.

We must take a moment to pay homage to the evil Serbian super spreader’s number one challenger Raphael Nadal. The daring Spaniard really showed why he’s Jesse Owens of sports today by bravely standing with the Australian government against the disgusting and dangerous Serb. “If he follows the rules, gets vaccinated, he has no problems,” said the Spaniard in all his brilliant insight. We know the bravest and most admired sportsballers of any era are always the ones who obey and do what they are told without asking any questions and Nadal is just another of these sportsballers to be cherished. He’s really the Muhammed Ali of our times.

Safety Demands Obedience
As an entire continent and millions of other critical thinkers around the world celebrate this historic victory over bodily autonomy and free choice, we must remember that safety is above all else the common goal we should all have in considering choices in life, not just our own safety, but the safety and feelings of others we’ve never met and never will meet. And as we all know, the only entity in the world with the ability to determine accurately what constitutes safety for all is the state. If the state demands that people do something in the name of safety they had better obey. If the state demands that people dispense with their ideas of liberty and autonomy in the name of safety and “good order”, it’s imperative that they obey.

When a foreigner enters the safe obedient social body they threaten to disrupt the “good order” of things with their selfish ideas and notions that are archaic and dangerous and they must be dealt with accordingly. Deportation if they’re lucky. Quarantine camps if necessary. A three year travel ban just to be safe. They must obey because safety demands it!

What a Ballclub!
The Serbian super spreader showed Australia that they are volunteers who have voluntarily committed themselves to a continental insane asylum where they must be medicated, subdued, restrained, isolated and are only allowed to roam within the confines determined by authorities or risk punishment, greater isolation, imprisonment or worse.

Novax Djokovic was really Randal Patrick McMurphy who entered this insane world where his disobedience to authority and refusal to accept their terms of madness was the real threat, and the cold passive aggressive government (Nurse Ratched) was going to make an example out of him. They approved his visa and let him come just for this purpose. His mere existence, his presence as an individual free thinker who refused to submit to medication time was a threat to the population of inmates who might see in him a source of liberation from their own mental and physical chains, the real threat to “good order”. And throughout history nothing is more dangerous than a source of liberation with the potential to inspire millions of prisoners to revolt against the government that rules without its consent. (read more)

Djokovic Actually the Big Winner in Australia—and So Are We

Having lost his bid this time for that record-breaking 21st Grand Slam title and been ejected from Australia, Novak Djokovic probably wasn’t feeling his best on the 15-hour flight from Sydney to Dubai, but in the long run, he will emerge the big victor in his duel with the Australian government.

He’s already something of a hero to many. According to the BBC, that flight was the most tracked on FlightRadar.

“Thousands of people are watching the player’s journey across Australia towards Dubai.”

How often does that happen?

I should really have titled this piece “Djokovic Defeats Australia Six-Love,” even though the Serb committed a few double faults himself along the way. Everyone does. “6-0 in favor of Novak” will be history’s ultimate score for what just transpired in Melbourne.

The Australian Open without Djokovic—the record nine-time winner of tournament—will have a gigantic asterisk next to it. If they persist in banning him for the supposedly required three years, the Open will have effectively been permanently tarnished as its country’s most important sporting event.

To a great extent, the idiotic (sorry to be so blunt, but it was hard to think of a more polite word that was remotely accurate) Australian officialdom have made a martyr out of Djokovic, escalating his importance beyond being the No. 1 tennis player in the world. Yes, many will still hate him, but the tide will turn inexorably because the tennis player is leading the inevitable anti-COVID curve.

Meanwhile, gripped by COVID hysteria that’s second to none—at least on a national level—Australia’s (aka Oz’s) government also literally has destroyed the reputation of their country in the process, removing it from millions of vacation bucket lists.

Who would want to go there and risk who-knows-what? If they can do it to one of greatest athletes in the world, they can do it to anyone. And they do.

Ironically, while they are acting in this bizarre manner, the vaccines are facing more global skepticism than ever from scientists, doctors, and tellingly, front-line nurses who witness all manner of disasters. Reports on the Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (VAERS) are mounting and even the World Health Organization (WHO), normally communist China’s best friend, is advising against the booster.

The powers that be in Oz appear unaffected by this trend or, probably more exactly, terrified of it. The more it’s shown to be true that the vaccines are more dangerous than they are helpful for most people (mRNA inventor Dr. Robert Malone says no one under 65 should take one), the more they look like fools, totalitarian fools at that, who incarcerate people in the most intolerable conditions for exercising what should be, in a democracy, their rights.

And those miserable conditions have been publicized worldwide now, from the ramshackle COVID quarantine constructs like Quonset huts out of World War II to the Park Hotel where Djokovic was housed with the other unvaccinated as if they were lepers.

In many ways, these conditions resemble those in which our own alleged Jan. 6 “insurrectionists” are incarcerated.

Australia’s schizoid and sadistic treatment of Djokovic became just another symbol of this multinational mess. But it could mark its opera bouffe apotheosis.

That’s why I agree with Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club, a Sydney resident and old friend of mine, that a tremendous backlash is brewing in Oz and, I would certainly add, here in the United States as well, once COVID is over.

And, as I wrote earlier and many others have surmised, the Omicron variant is heralding that end, behaving as most viruses do at the end of a pandemic, weakening as it becomes more communicative. Soon enough it will be another irritation we must face, but rarely a fatal one.

The problem engendered by this is that much of the leadership in Canberra and Washington will be very reluctant to let go of it.

We see that all around us, particularly in the [illegitimate] Biden administration, which clings to COVID-19 just as Obama claimed conservatives clung to their guns and religion, only more so.

Resistance, however, is building. What will be its watchword? Who will be the first to say “Mr. Biden, tear off that mask!”

Fernandez put the situation this way: “Already, the signs of political disillusion are plain to see, from Joe Biden’s collapse in the polls, the SCOTUS rejection of his vaccine mandate, Boris Johnson’s slipping hold on power to Novak Djokovic’s amazing one-man stand against Australia’s vaccine visa policy: a worldwide storm is brewing and it will break over the political scene in 2022.”

That last is hard to deny if you were watching the amazing crowd at the Trump Rally in Florence, Arizona, the other night.

As for Novak Djokovic, I’m a bigger fan than I ever was. (read more)

The Last Days of the Covidian Cult

This isn’t going to be pretty, folks. The downfall of a death cult rarely is. There is going to be wailing and gnashing of teeth, incoherent fanatical jabbering, mass deleting of embarrassing tweets.

There’s going to be a veritable tsunami of desperate rationalizing, strenuous denying, shameless blame-shifting, and other forms of ass-covering, as suddenly former Covidian Cult members make a last-minute break for the jungle before the fully-vaxxed-and-boosted “Safe and Effective Kool-Aid” servers get to them.

Yes, that’s right, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, the official Covid narrative is finally falling apart, or is being hastily disassembled, or historically revised, right before our eyes.

The “experts” and “authorities” are finally acknowledging that the “Covid deaths” and “hospitalization” statistics are artificially inflated and totally unreliable (which they have been from the very beginning), and they are admitting that their miracle “vaccines” don’t work (unless you change the definition of the word “vaccine”), and that they have killed a few people, or maybe more than a few people, and that lockdowns were probably “a serious mistake.”

I am not going to bother with further citations. You can surf the Internet as well as I can.

The point is, the “Apocalyptic Pandemic” PSYOP has reached its expiration date. After almost two years of mass hysteria over a virus that causes mild-to-moderate common-cold or flu-like symptoms (or absolutely no symptoms whatsoever) in about 95% of the infected and the overall infection fatality rate of which is approximately 0.1% to 0.5%, people’s nerves are shot.

We are all exhausted. Even the Covidian cultists are exhausted. And they are starting to abandon the cult en masse.

It was always mostly just a matter of time. As Klaus Schwab said:

the pandemic represent[ed] a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world.”

It isn’t over, but that window is closing, and our world has not been “reimagined” and “reset,” not irrevocably, not just yet. Clearly, GloboCap underestimated the potential resistance to the Great Reset, and the time it would take to crush that resistance.

And now the clock is running down, and the resistance isn’t crushed … on the contrary, it is growing. And there is nothing GloboCap can do to stop it, other than go openly totalitarian, which it can’t, as that would be suicidal. As I noted in a recent column:

New Normal totalitarianism — and any global-capitalist form of totalitarianism — cannot display itself as totalitarianism, or even authoritarianism. It cannot acknowledge its political nature. In order to exist, it must not exist. Above all, it must erase its violence (the violence that all politics ultimately comes down to) and appear to us as an essentially beneficent response to a legitimate ‘global health crisis’ …”

The simulated “global health crisis” is, for all intents and purposes, over. Which means that GloboCap has screwed the pooch.

The thing is, if you intend to keep the masses whipped up into a mindless frenzy of anus-puckering paranoia over an “apocalyptic global pandemic,” at some point, you have to produce an actual apocalyptic global pandemic.

Faked statistics and propaganda will carry you for a while, but eventually people are going to need to experience something at least resembling an actual devastating worldwide plague, in reality, not just on their phones and TVs.

Also, GloboCap seriously overplayed their hand with the miracle “vaccines.” Covidian cultists really believed that the “vaccines” would protect them from infection. Epidemiology experts like Rachel Maddow assured them that they would:

Now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person,” Maddow said on her show the evening of March 29, 2021. “A vaccinated person gets exposed to the virus, the virus does not infect them, the virus cannot then use that person to go anywhere else,” she added with a shrug. “It cannot use a vaccinated person as a host to go get more people.”

And now they are all sick with…well, a cold, basically, or are “asymptomatically infected,” or whatever. And they are looking at a future in which they will have to submit to “vaccinations” and “boosters” every three or four months to keep their “compliance certificates” current, in order to be allowed to hold a job, attend a school, or eat at a restaurant, which, OK, hardcore cultists are fine with, but there are millions of people who have been complying, not because they are delusional fanatics who would wrap their children’s heads in cellophane if Anthony Fauci ordered them to, but purely out of “solidarity,” or convenience, or herd instinct, or…you know, cowardice.

Many of these people (i.e., the non-fanatics) are starting to suspect that maybe what we “tin-foil-hat-wearing, Covid-denying, anti-vax, conspiracy-theorist extremists” have been telling them for the past 22 months might not be as crazy as they originally thought.

They are back-pedaling, rationalizing, revising history, and just making up all kinds of self-serving bullshit, like how we are now in “a post-vaccine world,” or how “the Science has changed,” or how “Omicron is different,” in order to avoid being forced to admit that they’re the victims of a GloboCap PSYOP and the worldwide mass hysteria it has generated.

Which…fine, let them tell themselves whatever they need to for the sake of their vanity, or their reputations as investigative journalists, celebrity leftists, or Twitter revolutionaries.

If you think these “recovering” Covidian Cult members are ever going to publicly acknowledge all the damage they have done to society, and to people and their families, since March 2020, much less apologize for all the abuse they heaped onto those of us who have been reporting the facts … well, they’re not.

They are going to spin, equivocate, rationalize, and lie through their teeth, whatever it takes to convince themselves and their audience that, when the shit hit the fan, they didn’t click heels and go full “Good German.”

Give these people hell if you need to. I feel just as angry and betrayed as you do. But let’s not lose sight of the ultimate stakes here. Yes, the official narrative is finally crumbling, and the Covidian Cult is starting to implode, but that does not mean that this fight is over.

GloboCap and their puppets in government are not going to cancel the whole “New Normal” program, pretend the last two years never happened, and gracefully retreat to their lavish bunkers in New Zealand and their mega-yachts.

Totalitarian movements and death cults do not typically go down gracefully. They usually go down in a gratuitous orgy of wanton, nihilistic violence as the cult or movement desperately attempts to maintain its hold over its wavering members and defend itself from encroaching reality. And that is where we are at the moment…or where we are going to be very shortly.

Cities, states, and countries around the world are pushing ahead with implementing the New Normal biosecurity society, despite the fact that there is no longer any plausible justification for it. Austria is going ahead with forced “vaccination.” Germany ispreparing to do the same. France is rolling out a national segregation system  to punish “the Unvaccinated.” Greece is fining “unvaccinated” pensioners. Australia is operating “quarantine camps.”

Scotland. Italy. Spain. The Netherlands. New York City. San Francisco. Toronto. The list goes on, and on, and on.

I don’t know what is going to happen. I’m not an oracle. I’m just a satirist. But we are getting dangerously close to the point where GloboCap will need to go full-blown fascist if they want to finish what they started.

If that happens, things are going to get very ugly.

I know, things are already ugly, but I’m talking a whole different kind of ugly. Think Jonestown, or Hitler’s final days in the bunker, or the last few months of the Manson Family.

That is what happens to totalitarian movements and death cults once the spell is broken and their official narratives fall apart. When they go down, they try to take the whole world with them.

I don’t know about you, but I’m hoping we can avoid that. From what I have heard and read, it isn’t much fun. (read more)

Ominous: 28 House Democrats Not Running For Reelection in 2022

“Democrats hope to defend their razor-thin majority in the House in the midterms, amid a rough political climate.”

Nancy Pelosi’s fragile majority in the House of Representatives just keeps getting smaller as we approach the 2022 midterms.

As of last week, 26 Democrats had announced their retirements ahead of the 2022 midterms. Now there are 28.

Paul Steinhauser reports at FOX News:

House Democrat exit list grows to 28 as Rhode Island’s Langevin, California’s McNerney, announce retirements

Two more House Democrats – Reps. Jim Langevin of Rhode Island and Jerry McNerney of California – announced on Tuesday that they won’t seek reelection in this year’s midterm elections.

The announcements from the two lawmakers brings to 28 the number of Democrats in the chamber who are retiring after the current term or seeking another elective office in November.

Democrats hope to defend their razor-thin majority in the House in the midterms, amid a rough political climate. The GOP needs a net gain of just five seats in the 435-member chamber next year to regain the House majority it lost to the Democrats in the 2018 elections.

Langevin, the first quadriplegic to serve in Congress, said in a video statement that “after serving the people of Rhode Island for over 36 years, including 11 terms and nearly 22 years in Congress, today I am announcing that I will not be a candidate for elective office this November.”…

The 70-year-old McNerney – a Stockton, California Democrat who since 2007 has represented a heavily blue district in the state’s vast Central Valley – took to Twitter to announce “that I will not seek reelection in California’s newly created 9th Congressional District.”

(read more)

The Left Controls Almost Everything, So Why Are They So Afraid?

Perhaps they know their strength is something of a charade, it’s unstable, it’s not organic, it’s coerced. When it collapses, they fear it will collapse like a house of cards.

[...] I found myself wondering, what is the left so afraid of?

They control virtually everything: The presidency, Congress, Higher Education, lower education, professional schools and organizations, Hollywood and the entertainment industry, Big Tech and every substantial social media platform, all the large mainstream broadcast, digital, and print media with the exception of News Corp. entities, the HR department of almost every major corporation and many of the boardrooms, the permanent federal bureaucracy, the Joint Chiefs and senior military leadership, the FBI and DOJ, and I could go on and on.

It’s hard to think of any major national institution the left doesn’t control, except maybe the U.S. Supreme Court depending on which side of the bed Roberts and Kavanaugh wake up that morning. Which is why they want to symbolically blow it up through court packing, if they could.

It’s hard to imagine it ending. I’ve written many times about the dread of living with the loss of institutions. It’s something only people in the center or right-of-center have to think about. So many of us don’t see a way out.

What is the left so afraid of at their moment of near total control? Do they know something we don’t?

For one, there are cracks in the armor. They don’t control all the states, and that is a warning to them. The Free State of Florida is thriving, people are fleeing blue states for red states. People yearning to be free scares them. The parents movement scares them, because it’s a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, cross-party movement to reclaim the children. Internet platforms not under their control scare them. People who disagree with them and refuse to be silenced scare them. At some point, it can’t be contained.

Like the animals that sense a tsunami coming long before it’s visible and run to higher ground, they feel it coming. It’s not a guarantee, but just the thought of it is creating panic.

Perhaps they know their strength is something of a charade, it’s unstable, it’s not organic, it’s coerced. When it collapses, they fear it will collapse like a house of cards. (read more)

California weighing proposal that could double its taxes

The bill could increase taxes by roughly $12,250 per household

California lawmakers unveiled a new bill at the beginning of the year that would establish a single-payer health care system [including illegal aliens] – an ambitious plan that would be funded by nearly doubling the state's already-high taxes.

A new analysis from the Tax Foundation, a non-partisan group that generally advocates for lower taxes, found that the proposed constitutional amendment would increase taxes by roughly $12,250 per household in order to fund the first-of-its-kind health care system. In all, the tax increases are designed to raise an additional $163 billion per year, which is more than California raised in total tax revenue any year before the pandemic.

The proposal includes three main revenue raisers, according to Jared Walczak, a fellow at the Tax Foundation: Higher income taxes on wealthy Americans, a payroll tax on certain employees' wages for large companies, and a new gross receipts tax.

Under the bill, the top marginal rate on wage income would soar to 18.05% – well above the median top marginal rate of 5.3% and the state's existing rate of 12.3%. There would be an 18-bracket system, with higher taxes kicking in for individuals earning more than $149,509.The highest rate would apply to those who earn more than $2,484,121.(read more)

Leftists have a cow over Tucker Carlson's observations about Nancy Pelosi's strange new appearance

House speaker Nancy Pelosi apparently has had some plastic surgery.

Nancy does her part to support the spas, plastic surgeons, and artisan ice cream makers for herself while impoverishing the rest of us through inflation and high taxes to ensure that we never dare have the same.  And she'd like you to know, through the use of her face, as it were.

The picture we have now from this combination is a Dorian Gray–like expression of her true character.

There's not much to be done about people like this, but Tucker used his monologue to deal with Pelosi through the highly effective instrument of ridicule.

That was what outraged the HuffPo writer the most:

The star cable TV personality claimed Pelosi was actually the late singer Michael Jackson. Teeing up his "joke," Carlson told viewers they would have "had the shock of your life" to see the entertainer on CBS News' "Face the Nation" on Sunday.

"Now let's be clear, this wasn't a video of Michael Jackson performing his hit songs of the 1990s," said Carlson. "This appeared to be a living version of the international pop star that news reports claimed died of a drug OD more than a dozen years ago. And yet despite those claims there he was, fully, undeniably Michael Jackson talking on television. How can that be? Honestly, we have no idea. We're not theologians here. This is merely a news program. We can only show you what we saw. Here it is."

...and...

"See? Michael Jackson. That was him," Carlson commented after the clip. "No 'Billie Jean.' Apparently, he's given up singing and is telling lies about politics. Same man. If you've ever seen Michael Jackson, you cannot forget the face — though admittedly, he's had a lot of work done since we saw him last."

Oh, the horror.  As if the left never made fun of people's looks who couldn't help it, and then pioneered that as a standard mode of leftist argument.

Ridicule, though, of this kind that Tucker engaged in, was what Tom Wolfe used to do — he specially targeted the status-seekers and social X-rays and other ostentatious displayers of wealth in the era when conspicuous consumption takes on disguised forms but nevertheless is there.  Tucker made fun of it through his Michael Jackson comparison.

Rather than recognize that, for the Wolfean comic technique that it was and tipping its hat to him for his skill, they took the whole thing literally, sliding down to just where Tucker wanted them, flailing in the mud and spewing rage at Tucker's dreadful social faux pas and tasteless attacks on looks.

Big deal.  Pelosi knew what she was doing with that weird plastic surgery show.  The reality is, Tucker did, too.

(read more)

Crumbling Narratives Leave the Ruling Class with Everything to Fear

Here's what our COVID-1984 authoritarians want: they seek to use pandemics, wars, uncontrolled immigration, doomsday climate predictions, and "woke" cultural Marxism to keep people in a constant state of fear, divided among themselves, and willing to hand over their freedoms for evaporative promises of protection.  "Protection" in this racket means survival but not life, equity but not fairness, financial handouts but not prosperity, and politically correct narratives but no truth.

Vaccine Mandate for Cross Border Trucking Now in Effect, Mandate for Domestic Trucking Begins in a Week, Prepare Your Affairs Accordingly

The cross border vaccine mandate for truckers in/out of Canada is now in effect.  The U.S. vaccine mandate takes effect on January 22nd.

It will take a few days to see the consequences, but there will be consequences.

Keep in mind, any impact is taking place in a supply chain system that is already tenuous and unstable at best.  A small disruption that may have been minimally significant against a fully operational supply chain, is more likely to be a much bigger disruption in a supply chain that is already under a severe amount of demand side stress.  Somewhere in the range of 16,000 to 38,000 daily loads are likely to be impacted.

When questioned about this, Canadian Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic Leblanc says the trucking industry “has had adequate time to prepare for this.”  Keep in mind, the mandate was announced 45 days ago (November 30th).  According to the Canadian government, changing the structural rules for all the logistics and commerce in cross border shipping, 45 days is enough notice. WATCH

CANADA – […] “I think you probably won’t see that movement … that the government’s looking for,” retail expert Bruce Winder told CTV News Channel on Saturday when asked if the effort will encourage truckers to get vaccinated.

[…]  The mandate throws a “major wrench” in the Canadian and North American supply chains, he added, with grocers, food producers, the auto parts industry and building materials among the sectors expected to be most affected.

“I really hope that we’re not at the stage where you see food insecurity, where you’re actually going to grocery stores and there’s nothing on the shelf,” Winder said.  “That could be the worst-case scenario.”

Mike Millian, president of the Private Motor Truck Council of Canada, told CTV News Channel on Saturday that there were as many 23,000 vacancies at the end of the third quarter of 2021, with his group’s own studies showing that roughly 20 per cent of Canadian truck drivers operating across the border are unvaccinated.

[…] “If we remove a fifth of that workforce, we’re going to see shortages on shelves and we’re going to see inflation of prices, because the cost to bring this stuff here is going to go up.”  (read more)

The truth is no one knows how bad the disruption will be.  What we do know is that there will be disruption, and there is no infrastructure for a level of rig-switching at the border crossing region that could accommodate changing rigs, drop-offs and/or pick-ups or driver transfers on the scale that is being discussed.   The logistics here are a total mess.

Keep your fingers crossed, but prepare for FUBAR.

We have a friend who drives for a trucking company. They have 10 drivers who go in to Canada, he is one. Company told them – you all must be vaxx’d. Seven (7) refusing… company now has 3 drivers (for Canada).

— Cuprum Dea  Andy Beshear – Kentucky Tyrant (@CuprumDea) January 16, 2022

Friday was my last trip and contribution to the economy also.
Skippy, you woke a sleeping giant. pic.twitter.com/C9v4FyGdTm

—  Fed up Canuck  (@TonyErb3) January 16, 2022

A concerned Canadian Truck Driver… you should listen cause it effects America too pic.twitter.com/TMaCzNFjnY

— FiestyQgrl ~ Run To Your Goal (@FQgrl) January 17, 2022

I don't know who you talked to that gave you that information, but it's logistically impossible to sustain. I've worked booking trucks across the border for 5yrs and it is significantly affected everyone involved. Many companies will go under if this is not reversed.

— Gordolover  (@olea8) January 16, 2022

there is no room for it. The I-81 crossing at the St. Lawrence is near my home. You can't cross drop a load and then pick up there. Ever seen Windsor/Detroit? No way to do that there. How about the Rainbow bridge at the Falls? Nope, no room there.

— The Retiree  (@BillSpies1) January 16, 2022

(read more)