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About stuartbramhall

Retired child and adolescent psychiatrist and American expatriate in New Zealand. In 2002, I made the difficult decision to close my 25-year Seattle practice after 15 years of covert FBI harassment. I describe the unrelenting phone harassment, illegal break-ins and six attempts on my life in my 2010 book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.

54% of Voters Believe Cheating Will Determine Outcome of 2024 Elections

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By Steve McCann
American Thinker

A Rasmussen poll taken in October of 2021 found that 56% of all likely voters believed that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.  Another Rasmussen poll dated April of 2023 revealed that 60% of all likely voters believed that cheating affected the outcomes of many 2022 midterm elections.  Unsurprisingly in a Rasmussen poll published on June 14, 2023, 54% of all likely voters believe that cheating will determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

For a majority of the American electorate, and for a much higher percentage of Republicans, the issue of whether there was rampant cheating in the past two election cycles is no longer in question and their concern about the outcome of the 2024 election is fully justified.

The Republican National Committee (RNC), beyond issuing the usual fatuous press releases and reports about what they are going to do, has done nothing of substance on the ground to offset unabashed Democrat cheating.

In an effort to do what they can, individuals such as Scott Presler and his PAC have been on the ground in the various battleground states doing their best to not only register voters but instructing and recruiting volunteers to promote early voting, mail-in voting and ballot harvesting where legal.  However, instead of supporting and coordinating with Presler and organizations such as Turning Point USA, the RNC has deliberately ignored them.

By declaring an obviously senescent, incompetent and iniquitous Joe Biden as their potential nominee in 2024, the Democrat party implicitly is poking Donald Trump and the Republican Party in the eye, essentially, claiming that they can successfully elect any buffoon they choose as Trump and the Party are incapable of offsetting or eliminating their overt fraud and manipulation.

They can justify their arrogance as an inept Republican Party has lost or grossly underperformed in the last three election cycles.  In 2018 with the surprising loss of 40 seats in the House of Representatives, the fraud-riddled 2020 election and the equally fraud-riddled 2022 midterm which should have been a Republican landslide.

Since 2018 there has been one common denominator: the same personnel utilizing the same tactics have been and continue to be in charge of the RNC, the clearinghouse for national strategy and voter turnout.

While the party has been metamorphizing into a populist blue collar and middle-class America-First entity, the hierarchy has remained entrenched in the Bush self-defeating “civility” mindset and the resultant acquiescent approach in dealing with a Marxist-infused Democrat party.

No one personifies this predisposition more than Ronna McDaniel, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, first elected in January of 2017 and recently re-elected through January 2025.  She is the longest serving Chairman since Edwin Morgan, a founder of the Party and its first Chairman (1856 to 1864).

Throughout the months of the ill-advised and debilitating Covid-19 lockdown, the Democrats openly telegraphed their intent to legalize by any means possible mail-in voting and exploit ballot harvesting.  They quickly assembled a massive legal army to descend upon the battleground states to, oftentimes unconstitutionally, change state voting laws.  They were confident in the knowledge that the RNC would not forcefully challenge their efforts.  Further, that after the election, the courts, including the Supreme Court, would not overturn any election without irrefutable evidence — which would be nearly impossible to produce within predetermined timeframes.

The Republicans offered little opposition in the various state courts or legislatures as they haughtily allowed themselves to be caught flat-footed prior to the election and were grossly undermanned after the election.

Kurt Schlichter of Townhall wrote about his experience in Nevada in 2020 and pleaded with the Republican National Committee not to re-elect McDaniel in 2023.

In 2020, I lawyered after the election in Las Vegas.  Las Vegas was one of a half-dozen critical cities in winnable states where we knew the Democrat machine would be working overtime to execute their election shenanigans.  In fact, Democrat lawyers had been there and elsewhere for months prepping the battlefield for election night.  I got a desperate call the day after the election and drove out to Vegas to help.  Guess how many lawyers Ronna had ensured were on the ground by the time I rolled in 24 hours after the election ended.

100?

50?

A dozen?

One?  Not one, Kurt.  That would be crazy.

One

…And that was on Ronna.  Though she denies responsibility.  Remember, nothing is her fault.  You can’t blame her for not getting it done — she was only in charge.

Fast forward to 2022.  Did that look like the RNC’s legal forces were adequately deployed and ready to win?  Governor Lake, what are your thoughts on that?

Lost once, GOP?  Shame on you.  Lose twice?  Shame on you again.  Lose three times? What the hell are you people thinking re-electing someone who keeps blowing it?

Among the unfathomable aspects of this entire debacle is that Donald Trump, the victim of the rampant voter fraud and manipulation in 2020, wholeheartedly endorsed and called for McDaniel’s re-election as Chairman in January of 2021 stating: “I am pleased to  announce that I have given my full support and endorsement to Ronna McDaniel to continue leading the Republican National Committee.”   She easily won re-election and oversaw the overwhelming disappointment that was the 2022 mid-term.

Even more confounding is that in January of 2023, while taking a publicly neutral position in the vote to re-elect McDaniel for a fourth term, Trump had his staff lobby for her with the RNC delegates.  Despite having the option of electing an extraordinarily well qualified and proven candidate in Harmeet Dhillon, McDaniel on the strength of Trump’s influence was again re-elected.  Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, a diehard Trump supporter, openly expressed his disappointment and incredulity that Trump would again put her in office.

Trump’s continual backing of Ronna McDaniel cannot be justified or dismissed even by the most intransigent Trump supporters as he has had three distinct opportunities to replace her and chose not to.

Thus, the oft-repeated excuse that Trump relied on others to recommend personnel choices cannot be used as an explanation.  A defense which, in actuality, is a backhanded indictment.  Trump is the one who ultimately chose among others, John Bolton, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, William Barr, Jeff Sessions, Christopher Wray, and James Mattis — the tip of the iceberg of a long list of hires who have turned against him.  Further, Trump refused to fire gross incompetents such as Drs. Fauci and Birx.

2024 is a watershed election that may well decide the fate of the nation.  If Donald Trump is serious about winning in November of 2024, he must acknowledge that competence, the ability to motivate the grass roots, and outstanding managerial skills are far more important than personal loyalty or obsequiousness.

The time has come for Trump and other viable Republican candidates to call for Ronna McDaniel’s resignation and for a housecleaning at the RNC.  Rampant Democrat voting manipulation and fraud will not be defeated in the gilded offices in Washington D.C. but in the precincts throughout all the battleground states.

[…]

Via https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/06/the_gop_is_losing_the_vote_fraud_war_.html

 

The Coming Crisis of Cities: Get Out While You Still Can

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The Coming Crisis of Cities: Reinvention or Bankruptcy

by Charles Hugh Smith
of two minds.com

The human population has become increasingly urbanized for compelling reasons that have been in play since cities were founded thousands of years ago.

In a nutshell, cities offer greater economic / social opportunities and more novelty, variety and excitement.

Cities became possible when agricultural surpluses enabled labor to become specialized.  This increased: 
1. productivity, as skilled workers in workshops, mills, kilns, etc. could produce more goods per unit of time than households;
2. transportation, enabling the expansion of trade of commodities from rural areas and manufactured goods from other cities;
3. commerce, as goods could be warehoused in secure entrepots and sold in markets that attracted buyers from the entire region;
4. governmental services, as taxes on all this activity funded infrastructure and state and military functions;
5. non-governmental functions such as temples, schools, the arts and entertainment.

On the downside, cities were crowded and unsanitary and thus killing zones. Cities relied on mass in-migration of new residents to offset the horrendous annual death toll from cholera, plague and other infectious diseases.

Other hazards included conflagrations, being sacked by rapacious armies and rampant crime, especially at night (there were no streetlights in ancient Rome).

Elites congregated in cities because power was wielded in person. The ambitious of all classes also gathered in cities, as this was where wealth and power offered opportunities to get ahead.

As Fernand Braudel observed in his histories of France and European Capitalism, cities have always had higher costs of living due to this ever-greater demand for commodities, services, shelter and land.

The core utility and function of cities changed as the economy industrialized. The First Industrial Revolution of the 19th century required vast aggregations of capital, which led to the rise of banking and finance: surplus labor and workshops were no longer enough, finance had to scale up to fund the immense investments required to build real-world infrastructure such as railways, ports, mines, factories, etc.

The expansion of globalization as nation-states expanded into empires also placed a premium on finance and its sibling, insurance, as the financial risks of large-scale capital had to be hedged. This expansion of complexity required a managerial class trained in an expanded system of education, and a government capable of regulating this expanding systemic complexity.

Cities did not cease being centers of manufacturing and commerce; the so-called FIRE economic functions (finance, insurance, real estate) were added to the city’s core functions.

This mix began changing as advanced nations shifted to post-industrial “knowledge” economies. Dirty industries were shipped overseas or relocated outside urban areas, container ports replaced labor-intensive ports, and cities hosted the expansion of the “knowledge” industries of marketing, digital technologies, communications, data processing, etc.

Cities such as San Francisco transitioned from working-class economies of longshoremen, factory workers and shop-keepers to “knowledge/FIRE/tourism” economies, as the legacies of the working class city–the cable cars, port warehouses, Chinatown, North Beach (the Italian immigrant neighborhood)–became, in Jerry Mander’s phrase, “replicas of themselves,” urban Disneyland-type attractions.

The runaway expansion of financialization and globalization that has fueled the explosive expansion of the global economy for the past 30 years was kind to “knowledge/FIRE/tourism” cities and unkind to commodity-producing rural areas, as a flood of global supply suppressed the value of commodities.  Small towns that lacked the high-paying jobs of  the knowledge/FIRE economy decayed as capital and talent poured into mega-cities.

[…]

By artificially suppressing interest rates and flooding the system with credit available to the wealthy, the Federal Reserve has inflated one enormous speculative bubble after another in the past 25 years. The net result is cities are no longer affordable to the bottom 80%, or even the bottom 90%.

[…]

Those who bought houses 20 or more years ago are now wealthy, through no effort of their own. This generational inequality is tearing apart the social fabric. This level of inequality can have no other result.

Now cities are facing another transition, one that threatens their high-cost dominance: remote work and the reversal of financialization and globalization. Interest rates and inflation are rising for systemic, cyclical reasons, and globalization is reversing as national security becomes more pressing than increasing corporate profits.

[…]

In summary, here’s what’s happening: given the increasing speed of digital communications, the majority of the knowledge/FIRE economy work can be done from anywhere. This has long been the reality, but the pandemic lockdown acelerated the recognition of this reality.

Given the higher wages paid to knowledge workers and the absurdly high costs and life-limitations (kids and homeownership are unaffordable) of living in big cities, the incentives for those who were too young to buy a house for $150,000 that’s now worth $1 million are to move to an affordable locale and abandon the marginal benefits of the city (novelty, entertainment).

The incentives for the poor living on social-welfare benefits and the working-poor who do “real-world” jobs is to stay put, as their opportunities are considerably diminished in less wealthy regions..

The problem is the poor and working-poor pay a relatively modest percentage of taxes. The high-wage earners who are incentivized to leave pay the majority of taxes.

Cities are terribly costly to operate, and most of these costs are fixed, meaning they stay the same regardless of how many customers use the services. About 75% to 80% of all municipal budgets (the general funds, not projects paid by borrowing money via selling muncipal bonds) go to labor–government employees and their pension/healthcare costs.

Buses, subways and trains all have the same fixed costs and staffing whether they’re full or empty.

The BART subway/train system in the SF Bay Area is an example of how high fixed costs and declining ridership creates a “doom loop”–a “doom loop” that hollows out downtown office towers and the small businesses that depend on thousands of commuting office workers, and the transit systems that bring the workers to the office towers.

BART ridership has fallen precipitously, from 400,000 riders a day pre-lockdown to 166,000 today. This 60% decline in rider-paid revenue is far below the system’s fixed costs, and so somebody somewhere has to be taxed more to subsidize the system.

The older generations who’ve become wealthy due to the soaring value of their homes naturally want everything to stay the same: they want their homes to continue being worth $1 million, their property taxes to stay the same, the city services to stay the same, and so on. Speculative bubbles, financialization and globalization have been very good to them and they are unwlling to face the doom-loop generated by the excesses of financialization and globalization finally coming home to roost.

A Tale of Paradise, Parking Lots and My Mother’s Berkeley Backyard. (NYT.com)

But this isn’t realistic as young remote workers (and those older workers who want to cash out their massive gains and retire in more affordable locales) leave, the legacy costs remain sky-high but there are fewer residents with the wealth and income to pay for them.

Somebody has to pay more, or these services will go away. Municipal workers are unionized and will resist reductions in pay and benefits, even in municipal bankruptcy.

Remote work and the systemic inequality created by financialization and globalization are generating a doom-loop of incentives to leave before the inevitable collision with reality occurs: either services are slashed or taxes are raised, or more likely, both.

Higher taxes and fees means there is less income left to spend on novelty and entertainment. So raising taxes to pay legacy costs diminishes the disposable income needed to support the entertainment, dining, arts, etc. industries.

There are macro-consequences of the cyclical end of low inflation and low interest rates that also feed into the urban doom-loop. As the costs of essentials continue climbing, the bottom 90% have less disposable income to spend on vacations, novelty and entertainment. This means cities depending on the free-spending pursuit of pleasure will only be affordable to the top 10% who have bubble-generated wealth or unearned income from wealth.

The end of cheap commodities and money is a global transition which will reduce the disposable income of the majority of people who are currently free-spending tourists. Tourism, the most vulnerable form of disposable spending, will decline globally, possibly precipitously in high-cost cities.

Yet this “the pleasures of the city” model is what’s being offered as the “fix” for the doom-loop: 26 Empire State Buildings Could Fit Into New York’s Empty Office Space. That’s a Sign.
“New York is undergoing a metamorphosis from a city dedicated to productivity to one built around pleasure.”

The problem is only the top 10% can afford the city’s pleasures, and that’s simply not enough to fund the immense legacy costs. Furthermore, the top 10% have the means to spend now, but once the unsustainable bubbles pop and borrowing money becomes unaffordable, even the top 10% will be hard-pressed.

[…]

Via https://healthimpactnews.com/2023/the-coming-crisis-of-cities-get-out-now-while-you-still-can/

 

Corrupt news media can’t save Biden from Ukrainian bribery scandal

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DAVID MARCUS: Corrupt news media can’t save Biden from Ukrainian bribery scandal

If they weren’t so deeply troubling, the numbers revealed by Media Research Center on the amount of time major network news spent on the alleged Biden bribery scandal would be laughable. Between June 8th and June 12th, the days following the bombshell breaking of the Biden story as well as the announcement of Donald Trump’s second indictment, ABC, CBS, and NBC spent 291 minutes on Trump, and not a single second on the Biden corruption saga.

Sadly this pathetic lack of curiosity is not surprising. After all, this is the same liberal media that took two years to admit the Hunter Biden laptop was real, and that only after buying hook, line, and sinker into a fabulous tale of Russian disinformation. All the while, mind you, not a single person in Biden world ever denied the laptop was Hunter’s. Not one time.

But this week, as more revelations emerge a significant tide has turned. The big three networks can ignore this story all they want, but it is now too big, too real, too fleshed out to go away. Between huge conservative outlets like Fox News, the Daily Mail, the New York Post, and the galaxy of smaller online right wing media, this shocking story is making its way into the public consciousness. So what changed?

The most important and obvious change is that Republicans under the leadership of Speaker Kevin McCarthy now have the power to run investigations and compel cooperation. For all the “woe is us,” hand wringing after the disappointing 2022 midterms, the slim victory in the People’s House has finally unlocked the Pandora’s Box of Biden corruption. From FBI documents, to bank records, and beyond the GOP has in just 6 months uncovered a treasure trove of nefarious actions.

Last Month, House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer revealed that a whopping 9 members of Biden’s family had received payments from foreign interests, and just like that the idea that Hunter Biden was just one bad egg went up in a puff of crack smoke. There is no more innocent explanation to this spider web network of payments to the Bidens than there is of Hunter’s laughable $83,000 a month position on Burisma’s board of directors.

And speaking of Burisma–the Ukrainian gas company at the heart of Donald Trump’s first impeachment–this month Comer obtained, after long objections from FBI Director Chrishtopher Wray, a document directly alleging a bribery scheme. That’s right, according to a credible, long time FBI informant, the owner of the company claims to have directly given $10 million dollars to the Bidens, and says he has the receipts in the form of recorded phone calls, which he kept as “insurance.”

And now, Joe Biden is starting to get more questions about this whole sordid mess, this week when asked at a pool spray why the FBI document refers to him as “The Big Guy,” a clearly agitated president snapped back asking, “Why’d you ask such a dumb question?” Here’s why Joe, because that nickname for you comes up time and again in this scandal, oh and also, when first asked about all of this you blatantly lied about never having spoken to Hunter about his business dealings. That’s why.

The truth is a funny thing. It can be hidden, it can be hard to find, but it’s always there, and like a weed it always finds a way to pop through obfuscation and make itself known. For years now the mainstream media has tended to the garden of Joe Biden’s image with loving care, protecting the few flowers and fruits while hiding the infestation of corruption. But it’s not working anymore, this story is not going away.

It has become completely obvious that the liberal news media is trying to run the Hunter laptop play again, to ignore it for as long as possible, and eventually, maybe years later, gravely say, “oh well, maybe there was something to it after all, but it’s not a big deal.” But this is, in the immortal words of Joe Biden himself, a big f*cking deal and there isn’t a rug in the world big enough to sweep it under.

Do not get distracted. There is only one major, earth shattering story in American politics today, it is the Biden bribery scandal. The dam is breaking and sooner rather than later, as always, the truth will out.

[…]

Via https://humanevents.com/2023/06/18/david-marcus-corrupt-news-media-cant-save-biden-from-ukrainian-bribery-scandal

The FBI Groomed a 16-Year-Old With “Brain Development Issues” to Become a Terrorist

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The Intercept

An undercover FBI agent befriended the teenager online. When he turned 18, he was arrested for supporting ISIS.

Last week, the Department of Justice announced the arrest of a teenager in Massachusetts on allegations of providing financial support to the Islamic State group.

A flurry of reports picked up on the arrest of Mateo Ventura, an 18-year-old resident of the sleepy town of Wakefield, echoing government claims that an international terrorist financier and ISIS supporter had just been busted in the United States. The Department of Justice’s own press release on the case likewise trumpeted Ventura’s arrest for “knowingly concealing the source of material support or resources that he intended to go to a foreign terrorist organization.”

[…]

The only problem with the case and how it has been described, however, is that according to the government’s own criminal complaint, Ventura had never actually funded any terrorist group. The only “terrorist” he is accused of ever being in contact with was an undercover FBI agent who befriended him online as a 16-year-old, solicited small cash donations in the form of gift cards, and directed him not to tell anyone else about their intimate online relationship, including his family.

The arrest has shaken his family, who denied allegations that their son was a terrorist and said that he had been manipulated by the FBI. Ventura’s father, Paul Ventura, told The Intercept that Mateo suffered from childhood developmental issues and had been forced to leave his school due to bullying from other students.

“He was born prematurely, he had brain development issues. I had the school do a neurosurgery evaluation on him and they said his brain was underdeveloped,” Ventura said. “He was suffering endless bullying at school with other kids taking food off his plate, tripping him in the hallway, humiliating him, laughing at him.”

Contrary to the sensational narrative fed to the news media of terrorist financing in the U.S., the charging documents show that Ventura gave an undercover FBI agent gift cards for pitifully small amounts of cash, sometimes in $25 increments. In his initial bid to travel to the Islamic State, the teenager balked — making up an excuse, by the FBI’s own account, to explain why he did not want to go. When another opportunity to travel abroad arose, Ventura balked again, staying home on the evening of his supposed flight instead of traveling to the airport. By the time the investigation was winding down, he appeared ready to turn in his purported ISIS contact — an FBI agent — to the FBI.

There is still much that remains to be known about Ventura’s case, which remains in its early stages. More information may still come to light as it moves to discovery and trial, including about his dealings with the FBI and other activities online.

Yet based on the government’s own account of what led to Ventura’s arrest, there is reason to believe that his case is less a serious terrorism bust than one of the many instances in which a troubled or mentally unfit young man was groomed by undercover FBI agents to commit a crime that would not have otherwise happened.

[…]

Paul Ventura said that in 2021 armed FBI agents from visited his home, informed him that his son had been browsing websites “that he shouldn’t be looking at,” and connected him with what they said was a counselor. After the initial visit, he said he had no knowledge of his son’s ongoing communications with the FBI undercover agent online.

[…]

The facts of the case against Mateo Ventura laid out in the government’s criminal complaint detail how his relationship developed with the FBI.

In August 2021, when he was 16 years old, Ventura began communicating with an undercover FBI agent online. He told the agent of his desire to make “hijrah,” or migrate to territories under control of the Islamic State.

By the time of the discussion, ISIS had been largely vanquished in its home territories of Iraq and Syria, though it is not clear whether Ventura had been aware of this. According to the Department of Justice’s complaint, an undercover FBI agent impersonating an ISIS member communicated to the 16-year-old in broken English, encouraging his decision and expressly telling him not to inform anyone else about their online conversations, including friends or family.

[…]

Ventura continued chatting with the undercover agent about what he could do for ISIS, including potentially fighting for them in a foreign country. The two settled on him buying a $25 Google Play gift card and sending the redemption code to the FBI agent. At the FBI’s direction, the 16-year-old also recorded an audio file of himself elaborately pledging allegiance to the leader of ISIS and transmitting the audio recording over the chat.

Over the next year two years, Ventura continued sending small amounts of cash through gift cards to the FBI agent, mostly through gaming stores like Steam, PlayStation Network, and Google Play. The amounts of his small transactions, which spanned over roughly two years, added up to a total of $965 during the time that he was a juvenile, and another $705 after he became a legal adult.

All the while, Ventura’s conversations with the FBI undercover operative online continued, including promises to make a passport and assurances that he would teach himself Arabic “very fast” in case he traveled to Egypt on behalf of the group.

In the end, Ventura appeared to get cold feet. In September 2022, when he was 17 years old, he told the agent that he could no longer “go for hijrah,” because he had been “hurt very bad in fall and can no longer walk.” The injury was an excuse that the FBI — which, according to the affidavit in the case, interviewed Ventura six days thereafter — concluded had been made up by the teen.

In January 2023, just after his 18th birthday, Ventura got back in touch with the FBI agent on the encrypted messaging platform. Apologizing for not being communicative in previous months after his supposed injury, Ventura again said he wanted to travel to the Islamic State. The pair discussed the possibility of him dying in an attack by ISIS fighters somewhere in the world or attending a training camp.

At the FBI undercover operative’s direction, Ventura took a video of himself and sent it over the chat, telling the agent that he had a beard now. The FBI agent praised the performance, saying Ventura was “strong” and “Look (sic) like lion.”

Ventura sent the FBI operative another $25 Google Play gift certificate, which he was assured would be used for jihad, before trying and failing to book several flights due to apparent lack of access to a credit card. On April 10 this year, Ventura finally succeeded in booking a Turkish Airlines flight to Egypt.

But instead of boarding the flight, or even leaving his residence on the night it was scheduled, Ventura contacted the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center and reported a tip, stating in a rambling message that he wanted “10 million dollars in duffel bags” in exchange for information on future terrorist attacks. “I known (sic) you thought I am retarded fool but jokes on you I will not admit I sent this or communicate until the cash is delivered,” the message said, according to the criminal complaint in the case.

By this time in the investigation, Ventura had not only seemingly developed cold feet about joining the group, but appeared eager to sell out his supposed ISIS contact to law enforcement.

Ventura called the FBI again several times in the coming days, telling them that he wanted to help with “terror” and again offering to help stop a future ISIS terrorist attack and to provide information about people who were facilitating travel for the group, in exchange for cash and legal immunity for himself.

[…]

On April 20, according to the affidavit, he was informed in a phone call from the FBI that the information he had provided was “not specific and therefore not actionable.”

Meanwhile, as his attempts to blow the whistle on the FBI’s own informant in exchange for millions of dollars of cash appeared to stall, Ventura also continued communicating with their undercover operative online, apologizing for missing his flight to Egypt and inquiring about other ways he might travel to join ISIS. On May 16, he sent another Google Play gift card to the agent, with a value of $45.

These interactions continued until Ventura was arrested in early June and charged with one count of “knowingly concealing the source of material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization” — reference to the gift card donations he had spent years sending to the FBI during their chats online.

Although news reports echoed the Justice Department’s portrayal of the arrest as the foiling of a nascent Islamic State funding operation in the U.S., there is no indication in the allegations against him that Ventura had ever been in touch with the terrorist group.

[…]

Via https://theintercept.com/2023/06/15/fbi-undercover-isis-teenager-terrorist/

Organizing Across the Class Divide

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TThe Global Activists Manual

Edited by Mike Prokosch and Laura Raymond 2002

Thunder’s Moth Press/Nation Books

Book Review

My primary interest in this collection of essays relates to its extensive coverage of the “Battle of Seattle,”* protests in which 50,000+ people shut down the 1999 WTO ministerial conference by blocking delegates’ access to the Seattle Convention Center.

In my view, the absence Unfortunately it contains no essays by the Seattle protest organizers. With the help of Ralph Nader and Public Citizen, the latter began preparing a year in advance to enable meaningful participation by tens of thousands of activists from around the world – in puppet and banner making workshops, civil disobedience training and a two-day teach-in (in Seattle’s Benaroya Symphony Hall) by San Francisco’s International forum on globalization. affinity group formation.

Thanks to this preparation, organizers already had 13 affinity groups surrounding the Convention Center at sunrise, when Seattle police arrived to cordon off the street. The book also fails to mention the hundreds of Seattleites who hosted out-of-state activists in their homes once the hotels were fully booked.

I agreed with the common theme expressed in several essays that the anti-WTO protests, like anti-globalizaton protests that followed, tended to be mainly white and middle class. I particularly appreciated the analyses by Fred Rose in his essay “Coalitions Across the Class Divide,” about middle class activists’ individual relationship with authority based on their skills and knowledge. For this reason, they tend to think change happens by getting the right truth out and pressuring those in authority to change their views. In contrast, working class campaigns nearly always arise from urgent local problems bringing victims together to demand a solution.

Otherwise I was disappointed The Global Activists Manual spent so little time addressing the impact of class issues in organizing and the abandonment of minimum wage workers by the Democratic party.

This is not terribly surprising, given the publisher. The Nation magazine is notorious for its dismissal of both class politics and intelligence crimes, such as the JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcolm assassinations and 9-11, as right wing conspiracy theories.

*In which I participated in early organizing meetings

Biden To Deploy Thousands of Armed IRS Officers To Forcibly Seize Guns From Americans

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Biden deploys IRS officers to begin confiscating Americans' guns
Sean Adl-Tabatabai

The Biden administration has announced plans to begin deploying armed IRS officers to seize guns from Americans, regardless of whether their firearms were purchased legally or not.

In a disturbing first step, the IRS sent twenty armed Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agents to carry out a raid on a gun store in Great Falls, Montana, seizing all Form 4473s – documents that contain the buyer’s information. It is believed this information will be used by the IRS in the near future to conduct unconstitutional raids on Americans.

Tom Van Hoose, owner of Highwood Creek Outfitters, says he has been under constant surveillance by state and federal agencies for over two years, according to KRTV.

Thegatewaypundit.com reports: On Wednesday, the gun shop owner reported an unexpected visit from 20 heavily armed IRS agents at his store.

The agents reportedly arrived at the shop early in the morning, as Van Hoose was opening for the day.

“We have now confirmed that both the IRS and the ATF were at Highwood Creek Outfitters in Great Falls around 7 am this morning. Both the IRS and ATF would not say why they were there,” KMON Radio reported.

“A spokeswoman for the IRS would only say they were there on official IRS business. The ATF says it was providing assistance to the IRS. We attempted to enter the store today and were stopped by agents at the door who would only say that the gun store is closed and will reopen tomorrow,” the news outlet added.

According to Hoose, the federal scrutiny began two years ago and has involved various agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and now, the Internal Revenue Service.

“They must think we’re making a fortune in the gun business to investigate us like this, assuming we’re hiding thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars. However, anyone familiar with gun business profit margins would know that’s not the case,” Van Hoose told MTN News.

Van Hoose claims that he was simply told his business had been reported, although he remains in the dark about who reported it or why. He believes the whole episode was politically motivated.

“I can only assume that it’s because of the style of weapons that we have and the press that’s so against them,” said Van Hoose. “The current administration seems to be hell bent on getting those guns out of the hands of average Americans.”

The day’s operations were disrupted, leading to a significant loss of revenue.

“I had about 30 minutes to operate, making just a single $16 sale,” Hoose said.

Highwood Creek Outfitters is America’s largest online firearms and accessories mall, according to its website. The store is known for selling what Van Hoose calls “fun guns,” including AR-15’s and AK-47s.

[…]

The Great Falls Police Department confirmed it was informed about the investigation and provided security, according to KRTV.

Although the Montana Department of Justice claimed no involvement in the incident, an IRS spokesperson confirmed their presence at Highwood Creek Outfitters but refrained from providing further details.

The recent incident has attracted political attention, with Congressman Matt Rosendale expressing his concern over the IRS and ATF’s actions, interpreting them as another example of the Biden regime’s weaponization of federal agencies against hardworking Americans.

“I’m incredibly disturbed by initial reports that the IRS and ATF closed Highwood Creek Outfitters without any warning today,” said Rep Rosendale in a statement.

“This is yet another example of the Biden Administration weaponizing federal agencies to target and harass hardworking Americans. We cannot allow Biden to continue expanding these agencies to infringe on our liberties,” he added.

On Friday afternoon, the congressman announced he sent a letter to ATF Director Steven Dettelbach and IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, asking for answers.

“The weaponization of our government must be STOPPED, which is why I sent a letter to ATF Director Dettelbach and IRS Commissioner Werfel demanding answers about this outrageous attack and have used every tool available to me to remove funding for the 87,000 additional IRS agents!” Rep. Rosendale said.

Read the full letter here.

Rep. Matt Rosendale joined Chris Salcedo to discuss the incident.

“Here’s what they took out. IRS – financial records, accounting, making sure what transactions were taking place. No, they took all of the 4473 forms. The 4473 forms are what everyone fills out when they go to purchase a firearm,” said Rosendale.

“And it’s just a big disclosure to make sure that you don’t have a criminal background or other reasons where you should not be purchasing a firearm. So the IRS took every single one of the 4473s that Tom Van Hoose had in his possession there at Highwood Creek Outfitters,” he added.

[…]

Via https://thepeoplesvoice.tv/biden-to-deploy-thousands-of-armed-irs-officers-to-forcibly-seize-guns-from-americans/

RNZ Editor Suspended for Providing Balanced News on Ukraine

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An editor at Radio New Zealand has been suspended and is under investigation for the time-honored practices of providing balanced and factual reporting

Violent Maidan coup in Ukraine, 2014. (Wikipedia)

By Tony Kevin
in Canberra
Special to Consortium News

An editor at Radio New Zealand has been suspended and is under investigation for the time-honored practices of providing balanced and factual reporting.

 

On Friday The Guardian Australia website carried a news report, with a follow-up piece on Monday, whose implications for free speech are profoundly disturbing.

They concern a Radio New Zealand, or RNZ, broadcasting employee — unnamed, but everyone in the small New Zealand broadcasting world will soon know who it is — who has been placed on leave while their professional conduct is investigated.  Obviously, a career hangs in the balance. 

The malign ghosts of Orwell’s 1984 stalk this story.

‘Russian Garbage’

This unnamed person in RNZ committed the cardinal sin of “inappropriate editing” of incoming Reuters news feeds on the war in Ukraine to insert “Russian garbage” in the contemptuous words of Paul Thompson, chief executive of RNZ. That is to say, they drew on Russian news sources to insert balancing pro-Russian material to the incoming Western news agency feeds.  

The Guardian tells us that in fact accurate information about Ukraine was added to the Reuters copy:

“The articles in question made a range of amendments: adding the word ‘coup’ to describe the Maidan revolution; changing a description of Ukraine’s former ‘pro-Russian president’ to read ‘pro-Russian elected government’; adding references to a ‘pro-western government’ that had ‘suppressed ethnic Russians’; and on several occasions adding references to Russian concerns about ‘neo-Nazi elements’ in Ukraine.” 

And more truth was added to the story, The Guardian says:

“In one article, a paragraph was added reading: ‘The Kremlin also said its invasion was sparked by a failure to implement the Minsk agreement peace accords, designed to give Russia speakers autonomy and protection, and the rise of a neo-Nazi element in Ukraine since a coup ousted a Russian-friendly Ukrainian government in 2014.’

Another added that Russia launched its invasion ‘claiming that a US-backed coup in 2014 with the help of neo-Nazis had created a threat to its borders and had ignited a civil war that saw Russian-speaking minorities persecuted.’”

This, it seems, is an offence not to be countenanced any longer in New Zealand. “An RNZ spokesperson, John Barr, said in a statement after the first article came to public attention that ‘RNZ is taking the issue extremely seriously and is investigating how the situation arose,’” the newspaper wrote.

The Guardian, in its effort to “correct” the story, says: “Ukraine says these claims are discredited Kremlin propaganda … The anti-corruption movement was peaceful and had widespread public support. Yanukovych fled to Russia months later after his security forces shot dead more than 100 unarmed protesters.”  

‘Gutted’

The RNZ executive Thompson was “gutted” to learn what has been going on under his watch. We read that 250 past published articles have been gone through “with a finetooth comb” to investigate and counter such offensive inserted material, and thousands more are being reviewed.

Sixteen such offending  articles have been found and warning commentaries added to them. Investigations continue while the staffer remains indefinitely suspended. The responsible minister is being briefed. Clearly these editors have not delved very deeply into the Ukraine story.

Luke Harding’s Involvement 

Both Guardian articles carry a tagline that says “Additional reporting by Luke Harding.” This should be a key warning to everyone in New Zealand’s and Australia’s broadcasting world, indeed in the entire English-speaking world.

Harding carries a formidable reputation as an inveterate anti-Russian British journalist with alleged strong links to the U.K. anti-Russian disinformation system and even to MI6, the U.K.’s secret intelligence service.

He was heavily involved in the Julian Assange affair and in the now discredited campaign to label former U.S. President Donald Trump as under Russian control. He is known as a leading Western disinformation warrior.

Normal Editorial Practice

Australian Broadcasting Company journalists edit incoming feeds from Reuters and other wire services all the time. They add context, link to previous stories, add Australian-relevant material. 

The problem is, this person in RNZ was adding such context from the “wrong ‘side.’”

The ABC has long been exposed as an obedient servant of the U.S.-dominated Five Eyes intelligence network and runs along approved anti-Russian and anti-Chinese editorial lines. RNZ, by contrast, is still widely respected in New Zealand. But it committed the sin of allowing counter-perspectives to be heard on the responsibility for the present tragic war in Ukraine.

Rendering of the “Five Eyes” intelligence network that includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., the U.S. (@GDJ, Openclipart)

Read the two Guardian articles to see what exactly Harding in London and his colleagues in U.K. disinformation appear to be objecting to. It sends a strong message across the Tasman Sea, from New Zealand to the Australian media world: We watch every word you say and every word you write.

Cancelled for the Same Thought Crimes  

The examples of journalistic misconduct identified in the two articles match exactly research and opinions on the historical context and causes of the war in Ukraine and mounting Russia-West tensions that I have been trying to express publicly in Australia as an expert former senior diplomat since publication of my book Return to Moscow in 2017.

As a result I have been cancelled, unpersoned, silenced — dropped down the Australia Broadcasting Company memory hole, never to be allowed on its airwaves again. 

An innocuous interview I conducted from Moscow with Paul Barclay for the respected ABC program “Big Ideas” in February 2022 was “disarchived” — yes, you read it right — a few weeks later, under pressure from unidentified critics.

Ukraine is Losing

The war in Ukraine now winds steadily towards its inevitable pro-Russian denouement. Russia clearly has the military edge and this will not change now. Billions of dollars’ worth of supplied U.S./NATO equipment continues to be destroyed in combat.

In suicidal offensives ordered by the doomed Zelensky regime in Kiev, an estimated half a million Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or crippled since February 2022. [Exact casualty figures are very hard to come by]. Many more proxy warriors will die in coming weeks as this brutal war of attrition demanded by the U.S. and NATO continues to destroy what is left of poor Ukraine. 

Australians and New Zealanders with naïve faith in the professional integrity of their national broadcasters will continue to be insulated from these tragic truths. 

Fortunately, for those who dare to read them, there are now plenty of accessible reliable sources of alternative perspectives on Russia-West relations and the pivotal importance of the war in Ukraine in transforming the world. This world now looks very different from outside the Western laager. We are in the midst of huge global changes.

But, thanks to the likes of Harding and his Anglo-American friends, we won’t find such information anywhere on the ABC or RNZ. We Antipodeans in the colonies  will be the last to know. 

[…]

Via https://consortiumnews.com/2023/06/13/suspended-for-providing-balanced-news-on-ukraine/

Mass Exodus Costs California $500 Billion in Revenue

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By Travis Gillmore and Siyamak Khorrami

Recent Internal Revenue Service data showing a net loss of more than 425,000 people between 2021 and 2022 indicates California is losing residents to states with lower or no income tax, according to a Chapman University professor.

“We are losing more of the high-income earners than the low-income earners, and it’s an increasing proportion of the total loss,” Jim Doti, president emeritus and professor of economics at Chapman University, told Epoch TV’s California Insider. “They’re more mobile and have the greatest incentive to leave because they’re paying 13.3 percent marginal income tax.”

High taxes are motivating wealthier residents to leave, with those making more than $200,000 per year increasingly choosing to relocate to states with no income tax like Texas, Florida, and Nevada, according to Doti.

California ranks as the second highest-taxed state, trailing only New Jersey, and IRS data show a flow of taxpayers from those with higher tax rates to those with lower rates or none.

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“Right now, if you’re in that in $200,000 or above … by crossing the boundary into Nevada where they’re developing higher-income residential areas, you save 13.3 percent on your marginal tax rate,” Doti said. “That’s not chicken feed, and that’s why people are leaving.”

Doti related the ongoing situation to an economic theory known as the Laffer Curve—a formula developed by economist Arthur Laffer showing that reduced taxation spurs economic progress—with the exodus unfolding as businesses and taxpayers seek cost savings by relocating.

“State-to-state migration is so easy,” Doti said during the 30-minute interview. “And you save a lot of money.”

The Golden State experienced a $29.1 billion loss in 2021, according to the most recent data available from the tax agency, approximately triple the amount lost in 2019.

“Cumulatively, we’re talking about nearly a half trillion dollars in income lost in five years between 2016 and 2021,” Doti said, noting that the effects of taxable income loss compound over time.

Doti sat down with host Siyamak Khorrami to provide more details about the consequence to the state of the population decline and loss of businesses after being featured in EpochTV’s Leaving Californiadocumentary.

Less taxable income means less revenue for infrastructure, social services, and government programs, according to economists.

Businesses are also fleeing in record numbers, and a survey conducted by Doti and Chapman University revealed that one-half of responding CEOs reported they were contemplating moving, with one-third already having plans in place to leave the state.

Strict environmental regulations and a lengthy permitting process are common complaints from business leaders, according to experts.

“The need to bring down regulation was cited by CEOs as the number one reason for leaving because it hamstrings operations, making it difficult to expand,” Doti said. “This needs to be dealt with expeditiously and with a high level of priority.”

Jobs and businesses leaving the state fuel the loss of workers, exacerbating the economic impact by limiting and removing revenue streams from local communities, according to experts.

Significant loss of human capital and intellectual capacity is one of the most concerning aspects of the California exodus, according to Doti.

First theorized by Adam Smith in his book Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, the idea that human capital is the greatest source of wealth for a state is based on the notion that well-trained, educated workers are most capable of producing the prosperity needed to maintain a sustainable, thriving economy.

Public education systems including the University of California and California State University are subsidized by the government in recognition of this value, and the loss of graduates to other states is detrimental to the future of the state, according to Doti.

“If you lose them, you lost all that investment,” he said. “Younger people are thinking about forming families and buying a home, and in other states, they can find a starter home and a piece of the American pie.”

With a current median California home sale price of more than $728,000, according to Zillow—an online real estate listing company—many new graduates are priced out of the housing market, according to experts.

Population declines are expected to continue, as the problems facing California are significant, and solutions would require lawmakers to refocus their priorities, according to Doti.

“Not only are they not focusing on the proper issues, they’re not going to the root cause of the problem,” he said.

Lack of access to resources and housing boils down to high taxation and regulation, as less job creation and economic activity are the inevitable results, according to Doti.

“If we can reduce taxes and regulation, people will stay, and we will have greater prosperity,” he told California Insider. “We will begin to generate the kind of vital economy that can finally do something meaningful about the problems we’re facing: homelessness, crime, and an educational system, especially in the inner city, that is failing.”

[…]

Via https://peckford42.wordpress.com/2023/06/18/take-note-canada/

 

Twitter Shatters CNN Smear: Musk and Kennedy’s Truth Crusade

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Dr Mercola

Story at-a-glance

  • June 5, 2023, Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk co-hosted a live Twitter discussion about issues they believe ought to be at the forefront of the political debate going into the 2024 presidential election
  • Topics covered included free speech versus censorship, the destruction of democracy, the Ukraine war, foreign policy, the humanitarian crisis at the border, COVID, the link between mass shootings and antidepressants, the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) and more
  • If elected president, Kennedy will issue an executive order forbidding federal agencies from participating in any efforts to censor speech by the American public
  • Kennedy is adamant about stopping the ever-growing influx of illegal immigrants across the southern border and is currently formulating policies to make the border “impervious,” while simultaneously opening up legal immigration pathways
  • Kennedy also wants to shut down gain-of-function research and bioweapons development

June 5, 2023, Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Elon Musk co-hosted a live Twitter discussion with Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, venture capitalist David Sacks, investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger and securities attorney Omeed Malik, about issues they believe ought to be at the forefront of the political debate going into the 2024 presidential election.

Topics covered included free speech versus censorship, the destruction of democracy, the Ukraine war, foreign policy, the humanitarian crisis at the border, COVID, the link between mass shootings and antidepressants, the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) and more.

[…]

Media Bias

Not surprisingly, the liberal media chastised Kennedy for championing “right-wing ideas and misinformation” during the interview. In fact, that was The New York Times’ headline.1

The NYT went on to smear Kennedy as “a leading vaccine skeptic” who promotes “conspiracy theories” and “sounded like a candidate … in the mushrooming Republican presidential contest.”

[…]

Similarly, CNN wrote Kennedy off as a “marginal candidate who espouses debunked medical claims,” complaining he “attacked the closing of churches, social distancing and government track-and-trace surveillance.”2

[…]

Kennedy on Social Media Censorship

Proving the ties between the Biden administration and Big Tech are still alive and well in the post-COVID era, Instagram recently suspended Kennedy’s official presidential campaign page, after reinstating his personal page, which had been banned for the last couple of years.

[…]

If elected president, Kennedy vows to call the heads of all social media companies into the Oval Office and “not walk out until we have figured out how to make this work and make it consistent with democracy.”

Like Sachs, Kennedy doesn’t believe that social media companies want to censor any of their users. Rather, they’re pressured to do so by advertisers and the government itself, which is using private companies to circumvent the U.S. Constitution. Were social media companies to continue censoring anyway, then turning them into common carriers could be one solution.

[…]

Musk is also adamant about the need for free speech. “I think if we don’t protect free speech at all costs, we don’t have a functioning democracy. If we don’t have a functioning democracy, nothing else matters,” Musk said. Ironically, since his acquisition of Twitter, the Democratic Party and its press allies have routinely portrayed Musk as a “threat to democracy,” primarily based on his support of free speech.

How Do We Combat Government Capture of Corporations?

Malik also brought up an interesting point. Kennedy has frequently discussed the problems we have with regulatory capture — the fact that most of our regulatory agencies, including the FDA, CDC and EPA are controlled by the very industries they’re supposed to regulate.

As a result, there’s no one to make sure the public is not harmed by dangerous drugs, vaccines and chemicals. But a reverse kind of capture has also taken place, as elements within the federal government are pressuring private companies to violate the Bill of Rights on the government’s behalf, while pretending these companies are doing it of their own volition.

[…]

That’s what we saw during the pandemic. We saw it in the vaccine mandates, and we saw it in the censorship of speech. I will forbid that, and make sure that it does not happen [again], at least not during my term in office. Immediately, the first week I’m in office, I will sign that executive order.”

Kennedy on the Border Crisis

Kennedy is also adamant about stopping the steady and ever-growing influx of illegal immigrants across the southern border.

[…]

Kennedy Wants to Shut Down Gain-of-Function Research

Kennedy is equally adamant about shutting down gain-of-function research, which is nothing more than a convenient cover for bioweapons development. According to Kennedy, the CIA continued developing bioweapons in secret after the Biological Weapons Convention went into force in 1975, and never stopped.

[…]

Kennedy also stressed that, as we now face true existential threats such as bioweapons and AI, we must get off our war footing, as the constant threat of war “gives these institutions the excuse to be super secret and nontransparent and put us in a security state where they can develop all these crazy technologies in secret that are going to kill us all.” He believes in negotiation and working with other countries, including China and Russia, to ensure that everyone benefits and prospers.

Elon Musk on Neuralink and AI

Kennedy, in turn, wanted to know how Musk, who years ago warned we should all be terrified of AI because “first, it’s going to take our jobs, and then it’s going to kill us,” justifies being on the leading edge of that risky work.

Musk’s company Neuralink received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval at the end of May 2023 to test its implantable brain chips in human subjects.3 This is the first step in Musk’s stated vision to merge and augment the human mind with AI.

“It seems to me that [Neuralink] is a technology that could potentially be really … denigrating to democracy and human freedoms,” Kennedy said. “What are your thoughts about that?”

[…]

Kennedy expressed mild disagreement with Musk on some of these points, noting that even self-driving cars pose a significant threat to society considering some 40% of American jobs involve driving. What kind of productive work can we replace all those lost jobs with?

Kennedy on the Ukraine War

Kennedy also didn’t mince words when asked to comment on the Ukraine war. He pointed out that the people of the West have been massively propagandized with “comic book depictions” of President Putin as the “bad guy” who attacked Ukraine unprovoked.

[…]

‘Put Yourself in Your Adversary’s Shoes’

Kennedy continued by elaborating on the importance of the Minsk agreement when it comes to reestablishing and maintaining peace with Russia.

[…]

In short, everyone knew that inching NATO eastward would be viewed as a direct confrontation and a formula for war. Yet that’s what NATO and the U.S. did. NATO kept expanding eastward, until only Ukraine was left. And that was Russia’s “red line” that could not be crossed. “It’s just dumbfounding,” Kennedy said. “We’re picking a fight with a country that has 1,000 more nuclear weapons than we do. It’s just insane.”

Kennedy on Gun Violence and the Second Amendment

Video Link

[…]

Via https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/06/17/reclaiming-democracy-with-rfk-jr-and-elon-musk.aspx

Covid Vaccine and the Rise in Turbo Cancers

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Dr. William Makis MD

“Turbo cancer” is a non-medical term that has arisen to describe very aggressive and rapidly progressive cancers following Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccination and suppression of the immune system.

I have written 13 substacks about turbo cancers so far:

[…]

Via https://makismd.substack.com/p/turbo-lung-cancer-24-year-old-uk