Today’s News 13th June 2020

• Removing A US President Without An Election
  Removing A US President Without An Election
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 23:45

  Authored by Paul Ryder via Counterpunch.org,

  Five times in the last ninety years, elements of the U.S. power structure have tried to oust a sitting president without an election.

  The efforts were aimed at Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump.

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  Two attempts succeeded and three failed… so far.

  Franklin Roosevelt

  President Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933 as the Great Depression was battering much of the world. Workers were striking, organizing unions, and escalating their demands. Fascists had taken power in Italy and Germany and were threatening to do so elsewhere.

  Prominent Wall Street bankers and industrialists said the only way to keep communism at bay was to adopt fascism and align with Italy and Germany. Roosevelt rejected that view, and the plotting began.

  The plan was to have 500,000 World War I veterans march on Washington, D.C. They would overwhelm the city, reduce Roosevelt to a figurehead, and transfer power to the Wall Street plotters.

  They decided Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, then the most decorated Marine in U.S. history, should lead the coup. This was a mistake. When their emissary told Butler what they had in mind, and said they could raise $300 million for it, he said, “If you get 500,000 soldiers advocating anything smelling of Fascism, I am going to get 500,000 more and lick the hell out of you and we will have a real war right at home.”

  After Butler chewed them out, he reported everything to the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee, including the plotters’ names he knew, officials with J.P. Morgan & Company, Guaranty Trust Company, Dupont Chemical, Singer Sewing Machine Company, and the Remington Arms Company. They all denied it, but Butler had convinced the Committee it was true.

  Roosevelt did not want a public confrontation, so the House Committee quietly wrapped up its work. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover dispatched agents to tell each plotter they would be under surveillance for treasonous activities. The plot was shelved.

  The lesson of this fiasco was money isn’t everything. The Wall Street titans had no experience with overthrowing a U.S. president. They had no operational arm. They did not know where to start.

  John Kennedy

  By the time President Kennedy took office in 1961, the military budget had grown twenty times larger in real dollars than in 1933. The money was paying for a military-industrial complex, including the Pentagon, weapons manufacturers, State Department, CIA, FBI, NSA, Atomic Energy Commission, NASA, Members of Congress, think tanks, universities, and a battalion of friendly reporters. The sprawling power system had become strong enough to perpetuate itself and to remove a president if necessary.

  What the Pentagon and CIA wanted first from President Kennedy was the overthrow of the new socialist Cuban leader, Fidel Castro. They organized an assault by Cuban exiles, assuring Kennedy it would spark a successful anti-Castro uprising in Cuba. When it did not, they demanded Kennedy send in U.S. combat forces. He refused, and the Cuban army captured 1,110 Cuban exiles and killed another 114. The Bay of Pigs invasion became known as the “Bay of Pigs fiasco.” Kennedy realized the Pentagon and CIA had known all along the exiles could not succeed on their own. They had tried to trick him into a direct U.S. invasion.

  Kennedy fired both CIA Director Allen Dulles and his chief Bay of Pigs planner, Richard Bissell, and threatened to “shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”

  CIA leaders and the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Defense Department were livid and continued to press him to authorize a U.S. invasion of Cuba. With the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, they saw a perfect opportunity for it. Again, Kennedy refused.

  The next year, 1963, a fusillade of bullets removed Kennedy from office. His successor, Lyndon Johnson, promptly appointed the blue-ribbon Warren Commission to figure out who did it. The Commission’s day-to-day work was led by Allen Dulles, the former CIA Director JFK had fired. In the end, the Commission report declared the assassination to be the work of a deranged loner, Lee Harvey Oswald.

  Most Americans were not convinced. In every one of nine Gallup polls taken since 1963, a majority of respondents have said they thought others had been involved in a conspiracy. Of the four people who knew the most about what happened — Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Fidel Castro – none agreed with the Warren Commission report.

  If it was not just one loner, who was in on the conspiracy? We may never know all the details of this very cold case, such as the name of the person who fired the fatal bullet. We have learned some things, however. The easiest of these is that the CIA was involved in the Kennedy assassination at every juncture, from preparation to execution to the cover-up.

  Not only was the CIA everywhere, they had ample motive, namely Kennedy’s refusal to invade Cuba. And, unlike the Wall Street plotters of the 1930s, they had experience with covert operations, overthrowing governments, and assassinating leaders. That is what the CIA was created to do.

  It is not necessary to prove the triggerman was employed by the CIA, or CIA leaders made a formal decision to kill the president, or everyone in the CIA even knew what was happening, or no one else was involved, to realize the CIA was heavily involved.

  Richard Nixon

  The Watergate story is familiar. President Richard Nixon ordered his staff to commit crimes and cover them up. Two budding Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, exposed him. Nixon resigned and left town in disgrace before Congress could impeach and remove him.

  The story came from Woodward and Bernstein’s articles and their book, All the President’s Men (1974). Actor Robert Redford then turned it into a popular movie with the same name (1976).

  In the following decades, however, this satisfying morality play has been undermined by 2,000 pages of investigative books by Jim Hougan (Secret Agenda, 1984), Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin (Silent Coup, 1991), James Rosen (The Strong Man, 2008), Russ Baker (Family of Secrets, 2009), Phil Stanford (White House Call Girl, 2013), Tim Weiner (One Man Against the World, 2015) and Ray Locker (Nixon’s Gamble, 2016; Haig’s Coup, 2019).

  Each examined Watergate from a different angle and found new clues to what happened. Adding all these clues creates a quite different story, showing how thoroughly the military industrial complex dominates Washington.

  If you made a chart of the newly discovered CIA and Pentagon links to Watergate, it would fill a large wall. To put it another way, if you remove the CIA and the Pentagon from the story, Nixon would have completed his second term and retired with dignity.

  Watergate really started in 1969, on Nixon’s first day in office. The President and his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, cut the Department of Defense, State Department, and the CIA out of foreign policy decision-making. The two men brought all policymaking into the National Security Council in the White House. They would often not inform the three main foreign policy agencies about policy changes until the last minute, fearing leaks or sabotage.

  Predictably, this created chronic bureaucratic warfare between the three agencies and the White House. When there were disagreements about policy, there was no way to resolve them. Spying and leaking inevitably followed. In turn, Nixon and Kissinger told the agencies even less.

  Left out in the cold, the Pentagon and the CIA moved against Nixon.

  To see how this wasn’t apparent from the Woodward and Bernstein story, consider the man who was the reporters’ pipeline to the truth, a secret source called Deep Throat. Finally, in 2005, Woodward said it was former FBI Associate Director Mark Felt. Nixon had rejected Felt for the top FBI spot when long time Director J. Edgar Hoover died, so he had a plausible motive.

  The mystery seemed solved, except the revisionist histories had already shown Felt was only one of many sources giving the two reporters damaging information on Nixon. Deep Throat was actually a composite character, and the bombshell stories mostly originated in two places, the Department of Defense and the CIA. These were the very agencies with which Nixon and Kissinger had been at war.

  By 1974, with his trusted advisors gone, Nixon found himself relying on two Pentagon officials to help him avoid removal from office. They were Chief of Staff General Alexander Haig, most recently Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, and J. Fred Buzhardt, who was both Special White House Counsel for Watergate Matters and General Counsel for the Department of Defense.

  Not surprisingly, these two military men spent months maneuvering Nixon into deeper trouble. After the House Judiciary Committee sent impeachment articles to the House floor, Nixon knew the House would impeach him and the Senate would convict and remove him. Nixon resigned.

  Bill Clinton

  In 1998, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Bill Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice concerning his sexual exploitation of a 22-year-old White House intern. The case then went to the U.S. Senate, where the Constitution required a two-thirds vote of the Senators present to convict and remove Clinton. The two impeachment articles failed, and Clinton completed his second term.

  Why did the Republicans fail? In the Senate, the Republican advantage was only 55-45, well short of the 67-vote supermajority needed to convict and remove Clinton.

  Since Bill Clinton was not at odds with the military-industrial complex, Wall Street, or any other power center, the GOP couldn’t count on help persuading Democratic Senators to vote for removal. In fact, the core of Clinton’s agenda matched the 1992 Republican platform, favoring NAFTA, tough criminal sentencing, ending welfare, NATO expansion, a hard line on Cuba, and so on. The GOP knew the prospects in the Senate were hopeless.

  The impeachment of Clinton, then, was not a genuine attempt to remove him. It was merely a partisan exercise in muddying up the Democrats as the 2000 election approached.

  Donald Trump

  The attempt to remove Donald Trump, called Russiagate, began as a 2016 campaign attack by Hillary Clinton. The charges against him continued in the press after Election Day, and ever since. In 2019, Democrats took a variation on Russiagate, called Ukrainegate, and used it to impeach Trump in the House of Representatives. The GOP-controlled Senate inevitably did not convict him. It ended up as a replay of the Clinton impeachment. Trump stayed in the Oval Office.

  What exactly was the Democrats’ plan? A successful Senate vote was never possible, so why would the Democrats devote three and a half years just to get an impeachment without removal?

  From their actions, it appears the Democrats were fixed on Watergate as the model for ousting a president without an election.

  That would be understandable. All but one of the top Democratic politicians in 2016 had been young adults during Watergate. In 1974, Bill Clinton was 28, Hillary Clinton was 27, Nancy Pelosi was 34, Harry Reid was 35, Chuck Schumer was 24, Joe Biden was 31, John Podesta was 25, and David Axelrod was 19. They were absorbing the Watergate story every day. The exception, Barack Obama, was only 13 at the time. Watergate would be their frame of reference.

  Accordingly, the Democrats staged a Watergate-style morality play, with Donald Trump playing the role of Richard Nixon. It was complete with a flow of shocking revelations, dramatic Congressional hearings, a Special Counsel, indictment of underlings who could be squeezed for evidence against higher-ups, watching the president’s poll ratings skid, disapproving newspaper editorials, and peeling off votes of Republican Senators. All this was supposed to result in the president’s resignation or impeachment and removal.

  It did not work.

  One problem was the series of bombshell news stories coming from unnamed intelligence sources. These included the DNC hack, local election board tampering, the Christopher Steele Dossier, St. Petersburg click-bait factory, sabotaging the Vermont utility grid, and so on. One after another the stories collapsed, usually for lack of evidence.

  In addition, the president’s favorability ratings did not plummet as they had during Watergate. Richard Nixon’s approval rating fell from 67% in January 1973 to 24% by the time he resigned. By contrast, Donald Trump’s approval rating, 45% in January 2017, had only fallen to 44% by the time of his impeachment.

  The underlying problem was the Democrats did not understand Watergate. They thought Nixon was foiled by tenacious crusading reporters and their savvy editor. In fact, Nixon ran afoul of the military industrial complex, which guided the press to the outcome it wanted.

  In the case of Trump, the Pentagon, CIA, and the rest understood how to manage the new president. They would tolerate his rally outbursts, NATO tantrums, and raving midnight tweets because they knew they could get what they wanted from him when it mattered.

  While the Democrats labored to portray Trump as soft on Russia, his actual policies have been in line with the bi-partisan foreign policy consensus to give the Pentagon and weapons manufacturers what they want. This includes sharp increases in overall military spending, a trillion dollars in new nuclear weapons, new types of nuclear weapons, destroying a series of U.S.-Russian arms control treaties, advancing NATO to the Russian border, tough economic sanctions on Russia, providing weapons to Ukraine and Poland to use against Russia, killing Russians in Syria, ejecting Russian diplomats from the United States, conducting war exercises on Russia’s border, and trying to stop Russian energy exports to Europe.

  If the Democrats had understood Watergate, they would have noticed a key condition was missing: aggravated conflict between the president and the military-industrial complex. That is why the Democrats failed.

  Of course, as 2020 election day approaches, President Trump has managed to create a triple crisis — his bungled COVID-19 response, the resulting economic paralysis, and his inciting a coast-to-coast police rampage — which may doom him with no effort by the Democrats. No one knows at this point.

  It is fair to say, however, that if Trump can’t regain his composure and resolve his current clash with the Pentagon, he will be taught a cold lesson about power.

  

• ​​​​​​​China Shows Off 'World's First' Passenger Drone Service At Luxury Hotel 
  ​​​​​​​China Shows Off ‘World’s First’ Passenger Drone Service At Luxury Hotel 
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 23:25

  An autonomous aerial vehicle technology company called Ehang has launched the world’s first commercial Urban Air Mobility (UAM) service in China. 

  The EHang 216 drone can carry fly two human passengers, has been exhibited in China and Europe over the last several years. We noted in April 2019, the drone flew in Vienna. Now it will be flying people from the LN Garden Hotel in Nansha, a coastal district in Guangzhou.

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  The partnership between EHang and LN Holdings will begin with a pilot program in the near term — marks the world’s first hotel offering passenger drone service to patrons. The drone will first provide aerial sightseeing tours, traveler transportation, air logistics, and aerial media light shows. 

  EHang and the hotel will eventually expand the air travel network to the regional community, offering drone-taxi service to patrons.

  CEO of EHang, Hu Huazh, said the partnership with LN Holdings would help transform “Guangzhou into a global air mobility pilot city.” 

  “Guests of LN Garden Hotel will experience our one-stop intelligent AAV services, including the unique aerial sightseeing, convenient and autonomous air deliveries, and high-tech aerial light shows,” said Huazh. 

  General manager of LN Group and chairman of LN Holdings, Liang Lingfeng, said: “We own a large chain of resources in the tourism industry, covering travel, brand hotels, conventions, exhibitions, and scenic attractions. By leveraging our controlling shareholder LN Group’s ability to integrate its resources in the consumer sector, cooperating with EHang could generate incremental products and services..” 

  “We can fulfill customers’ travel demands in the air and on the ground by combining intelligent technology with the tourist experience. Eventually, we will provide new products and services across different sectors, business categories, and regions in the country,” said Lingfeng. 

  The new service lays a foundation for regulators around the world to establish international guidelines that will benefit the long-term development of UAM services. The flying car market is expected to be a billion-dollar industry by the end of the decade. 

  Video: EHang 216 embarks on world’s first UAM hotel service

  At the moment, the most significant barrier to flying cars is regulation, especially in the US, where Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has set the rules on air travel — usually seen as an international standard. 

  

• A Brief History Of Antifa: Part I
  A Brief History Of Antifa: Part I
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 23:05

  Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

  U.S. Attorney General William Barr has blamed Antifa — a militant “anti-fascist” movement — for the violence that has erupted at George Floyd protests across the United States. “The violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly,” he said.

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  Barr also said that the federal government has evidence that Antifa “hijacked” legitimate protests around the country to “engage in lawlessness, violent rioting, arson, looting of businesses, and public property assaults on law enforcement officers and innocent people, and even the murder of a federal agent.” Earlier, U.S. President Donald J. Trump had instructed the U.S. Justice Department to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization.

  Academics and media outlets sympathetic to Antifa have argued that the group cannot be classified as a terrorist organization because, they claim, it is a vaguely-defined protest movement that lacks a centralized structure. Mark Bray, a vocal apologist for Antifa in America and author of the book “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” asserts that Antifa “is not an overarching organization with a chain of command.”

  Empirical and anecdotal evidence shows that Antifa is, in fact, highly networked, well-funded and has a global presence. It has a flat organizational structure with dozens and possibly hundreds of local groups. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Department of Justice is currently investigating individuals linked to Antifa as a step to unmasking the broader organization.

  In the United States, Antifa’s ideology, tactics and goals, far from being novel, are borrowed almost entirely from Antifa groups in Europe, where so-called anti-fascist groups, in one form or another, have been active, almost without interruption, for a century.

  What is Antifa?

  Antifa can be described as a transnational insurgency movement that endeavors, often with extreme violence, to subvert liberal democracy, with the aim of replacing global capitalism with communism. Antifa’s stated long-term objective, both in America and abroad, is to establish a communist world order. In the United States, Antifa’s immediate aim is to bring about the demise of the Trump administration.

  Antifa’s nemeses include law enforcement, which is viewed as enforcing the established order. A common tactic used by Antifa in the United States and Europe is to employ extreme violence and destruction of public and private property to goad the police into a reaction, which then “proves” Antifa’s claim that the government is “fascist.”

  Antifa claims to oppose “fascism,” a term it often uses as a broad-brush pejorative to discredit those who hold opposing political beliefs. The traditional meaning of “fascism” as defined by Webster’s Dictionary is “a totalitarian governmental system led by a dictator and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism, militarism, and often racism.”

  Antifa holds the Marxist-Leninist definition of fascism which equates it with capitalism. “The fight against fascism is only won when the capitalist system has been shattered and a classless society has been achieved,” according to the German Antifa group, Antifaschistischer Aufbau München.

  Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency, in a special report on left-wing extremism, noted:

  “Antifa’s fight against right-wing extremists is a smokescreen. The real goal remains the ‘bourgeois-democratic state,’ which, in the reading of left-wing extremists, accepts and promotes ‘fascism’ as a possible form of rule and therefore does not fight it sufficiently. Ultimately, it is argued, ‘fascism’ is rooted in the social and political structures of ‘capitalism.’ Accordingly, left-wing extremists, in their ‘antifascist’ activities, focus above all on the elimination of the ‘capitalist system.'”

  Matthew Knouff, author of An Outsider’s Guide to Antifa: Volume II, explained Antifa’s ideology this way:

  “The basic philosophy of Antifa focuses on the battle between three basic forces: fascism, racism and capitalism — all three of which are interrelated according to Antifa…. with fascism being considered the final expression or stage of capitalism, capitalism being a means to oppress, and racism being an oppressive mechanism related to fascism.”

  In an essay, “What Antifa and the Original Fascists Have In Common,” Antony Mueller, a German professor of economics who currently teaches in Brazil, described how Antifa’s militant anti-capitalism masquerading as anti-fascism reveals its own fascism:

  “After the left has pocketed the concept of liberalism and turned the word into the opposite of its original meaning, the Antifa-movement uses a false terminology to hide its true agenda. While calling themselves ‘antifascist’ and declaring fascism the enemy, the Antifa itself is a foremost fascist movement.

  “The members of Antifa are not opponents to fascism but themselves its genuine representatives. Communism, Socialism and Fascism are united by the common band of anti-capitalism and anti-liberalism.

  “The Antifa movement is a fascist movement. The enemy of this movement is not fascism but liberty, peace and prosperity.”

  Antifa’s Ideological Origins

  The ideological origins of Antifa can be traced back to the Soviet Union roughly a century ago. In 1921 and 1922, the Communist International (Comintern) developed the so-called united front tactic to “unify the working masses through agitation and organization” … “at the international level and in each individual country” against “capitalism” and “fascism” — two terms that often were used interchangeably.

  The world’s first anti-fascist group, Arditi del Popolo (People’s Courageous Militia), was founded in Italy in June 1921 to resist the rise of Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party, which itself was established to prevent the possibility of a Bolshevik revolution on the Italian Peninsula. Many of the group’s 20,000 members, consisting of communists and anarchists, later joined the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39).

  In Germany, the Communist Party of Germany established the paramilitary group Roter Frontkämpferbund (Red Front Fighters League) in July 1924. The group was banned due to its extreme violence. Many of its 130,000 members continued their activities underground or in local successor organizations such as the Kampfbund gegen den Faschismus (Fighting-Alliance Against Fascism).

  In Slovenia, the militant anti-fascist movement TIGR was established in 1927 to oppose the Italianization of Slovene ethnic areas after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The group, which was disbanded in 1941, specialized in assassinating Italian police and military personnel.

  In Spain, the Communist Party established the Milicias Antifascistas Obreras y Campesinas (Antifascist Worker and Peasant Militias), which were active in the 1930s.

  The modern Antifa movement derives its name from a group called Antifaschistische Aktion, founded in May 1932 by Stalinist leaders of the Communist Party of Germany. The group was established to fight fascists, a term the party used to describe all of the other pro-capitalist political parties in Germany. The primary objective of Antifaschistische Aktion was to abolish capitalism, according to a detailed history of the group. The group, which had more than 1,500 founding members, went underground after Nazis seized power in 1933.

  A German-language pamphlet — “80 Years of Anti-Fascist Actions” (80 Jahre Antifaschistische Aktion)” — describes in minute detail the continuous historical thread of the Antifa movement from its ideological origins in the 1920s to the present day. The document states:

  “Antifascism has always fundamentally been an anti-capitalist strategy. This is why the symbol of the Antifaschistische Aktion has never lost its inspirational power…. Anti-fascism is more of a strategy than an ideology.”

  During the post-war period, Germany’s Antifa movement reappeared in various manifestations, including the radical student protest movement of the 1960s, and the leftist insurgency groups that were active throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

  The Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, was a Marxist urban guerrilla group that carried out assassinations, bombings and kidnappings aimed at bringing revolution to West Germany, which the group characterized as a fascist holdover of the Nazi era. Over the course of three decades, the RAF murdered more than 30 people and injured over 200.

  After the collapse of the communist government in East Germany in 1989-90, it was discovered that the RAF had been given training, shelter, and supplies by the Stasi, the secret police of the former communist regime.

  John Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University, described the group’s tactics, which are similar to those used by Antifa today:

  “The goal of their terrorist campaign was to trigger an aggressive response from the government, which group members believed would spark a broader revolutionary movement.”

  RAF founder Ulrike Meinhof explained the relationship between violent left-wing extremism and the police: “The guy in uniform is a pig, not a human being. That means we don’t have to talk to him and it is wrong to talk to these people at all. And of course, you can shoot.”

  Bettina Röhl, a German journalist and daughter of Meinhof, argues that the modern Antifa movement is a continuation of the Red Army Faction. The main difference is that, unlike the RAF, Antifa’s members are afraid to reveal their identities. In a June 2020 essay published by the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Röhl also drew attention to the fact that Antifa is not only officially tolerated, but is being paid by the German government to fight the far right:

  “The RAF idolized the communist dictatorships in China, North Korea, North Vietnam, in Cuba, which were transfigured by the New Left as better countries on the right path to the best communism….

  “The flourishing left-wing radicalism in the West, which brutally strikes at the opening of the European Central Bank headquarters in Frankfurt, at every G-20 summit or every year on May 1 in Berlin, has achieved the highest level of establishment in the state, not least thanks to the support by quite a few MPs from political parties, journalists and relevant experts.

  “Compared to the RAF, the militant Antifa only lacks prominent faces. Out of cowardice, its members cover their faces and keep their names secret. Antifa constantly threatens violence and attacks against politicians and police officers. It promotes senseless damage to property amounting to vast sums. Nevertheless, MP Renate Künast (Greens) recently complained in the Bundestag that Antifa groups had not been adequately funded by the state in recent decades. She was concerned that ‘NGOs and Antifa groups do not always have to struggle to raise money and can only conclude short-term employment contracts from year to year.’ There was applause for this from Alliance 90 / The Greens, from the left and from SPD deputies.

  “One may ask the question of whether Antifa is something like an official RAF, a terrorist group with money from the state under the guise of ‘fighting against the right.'”

  Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency explains Antifa’s glorification of violence:

  “For left-wing extremists, ‘Capitalism’ is interpreted as triggering wars, racism, ecological disasters, social inequality and gentrification. ‘Capitalism’ is therefore more than just a mere economic order. In left-wing extremist discourse, it determines the social and political form as well as the vision of a radical social and political reorganization. Whether anarchist or communist: Parliamentary democracy as a so-called bourgeois form of rule should be ‘overcome’ in any case.

  “For this reason, left-wing extremists usually ignore or legitimize human rights violations in socialist or communist dictatorships or in states that they allegedly see threatened by the ‘West.’ To this day, both orthodox communists and autonomous activists justify, praise and celebrate the left-wing terrorist Red Army Faction or foreign left-wing terrorists as alleged ‘liberation movements’ or even ‘resistance fighters.'”

  Meanwhile, in Britain, Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), a militant anti-fascist group founded in 1985, gave birth to the Antifa movement in the United States. In Germany, the Antifaschistische Aktion-Bundesweite Organisation (AABO) was founded in 1992 to combine the efforts of smaller Antifa groups scattered around the country.

  In Sweden, Antifascistisk Aktion (AFA), a militant Antifa group founded in 1993, established a three-decade track record for using extreme violence against its opponents. In France, the Antifa group L’Action antifasciste, is known for its fierce opposition to the State of Israel.

  After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of communism in 1990, the Antifa movement opened a new front against neoliberal globalization.

  Attac, established in France in 1989 to promote a global tax on financial transactions, now leads the so-called alter-globalization movement, which, like the Global Justice Movement, is opposed to capitalism. In 1999, Attac was present in Seattle during violent demonstrations that led to the failure of WTO negotiations. Attac also participated in anti-capitalist demonstrations against the G7, the G20, the WTO, and the war in Iraq. Today, the association is active in 40 countries, with more than a thousand local groups and hundreds of organizations supporting the network. Attac’s decentralized and non-hierarchical organizational structure appears to be the model being used by Antifa.

  In February 2016, the International Committee of the Fourth International advanced the political foundations of the global anti-war movement, which, like Antifa, blames capitalism and neoliberal globalism for the existence of military conflict:

  “The new anti-war movement must be anti-capitalist and socialist, since there can be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the dictatorship of finance capital and the economic system that is the fundamental cause of militarism and war.”

  In July 2017, more than 100,000 anti-globalization and Antifa protesters converged on the German city of Hamburg to protest the G20 summit. Leftist mobs laid waste to the city center. An Antifa group called “G20 Welcome to Hell” bragged about how it was able to mobilize Antifa groups from across the world:

  “The summit mobilizations have been precious moments of meeting and co-operation of left-wing and anti-capitalist groups and networks from all over Europe and world-wide. We have been sharing experiences and fighting together, attending international meetings, being attacked by cops supported by the military, re-organizing our forces and fighting back. Anti-globalization movement has changed, but our networks endure. We are active locally in our regions, cities, villages and forests. But we are also fighting trans-nationally.”

  Germany’s domestic security service, in an annual report, added:

  “Left-wing extremist structures tried to shift the public debate about the violent G20 summit protests in their favor. With the distribution of photos and reports of allegedly disproportionate police measures during the summit protests, they promoted an image of a state that denounced legitimate protests and put them down with police violence. Against such a state, they said, ‘militant resistance’ is not only legitimate, but also necessary.”

  Part II of this series will examine the activities of Antifa in Germany and the United States.

  

• "Never Again": Frustrated North Korea Says Trump-Kim Bromance Is Over
  “Never Again”: Frustrated North Korea Says Trump-Kim Bromance Is Over
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 22:45

  The Trump-Kim bromance which held the potential for a historic breakthrough toward lasting peace and denuclearization on the Korean peninsula may have run its course. A top Pyongyang official now says there’s “little reason” to maintain ties. 

  “North Korea sees little use maintaining a personal relationship between leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump if Washington sticks to hostile policies, state media reported on Friday – the two-year anniversary of the leaders’ first summit,” Reuters reports of the surprisingly frank remarks.

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  Foreign Minister Ri Son Gwon said in statements reported by state news agency KCNA that Pyongyang is growing tired of what it sees as mere political point scoring from the US administration, with nothing actually changing for North Korea. 

  “Never again will we provide the U.S. chief executive with another package to be used for achievements without receiving any returns,” Ri said. “Nothing is more hypocritical than an empty promise.”

  He charged that the US continued to talk regime change and preemptive strike even as it touted its dialogue and ‘openings’ with Kim Jong-Un.

  “The U.S. professes to be an advocate for improved relations with the DPRK, but in fact, it is hell-bent on only exacerbating the situation,” Ri continued.

  The administration has yet to respond to these latest comments Friday, but it comes as the prospect for resumption of nuclear talks, which remain stalled since the end of last year, appear as bleak as ever.

  On Thursday a State Dept. spokesperson only said it is open to a “flexible approach to reach a balanced agreement” with regard to North Korea.

  But all this is alarming for the short term, also a moment the Pentagon is seeking to place missiles near China among US allies – though so far it’s not getting many takers. No doubt it means that after a series of short and medium range NK missile tests this year alone, North Korea is almost certain to restart its long range missile program, and likely nuclear testing as well.

  

• 6 Steps Toward Building Trust Between Black Americans And The Police
  6 Steps Toward Building Trust Between Black Americans And The Police
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 22:25

  Authored by Corey Brooks via TheAmericanConservative.com,

  The brutal treatment of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, by former Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, has sparked protests across the country, as well as calls for abolishing police departments in major cities. Floyd’s tragic death demands that we examine the underlying issues and systemic abuse within some police forces. But defunding the police will only invite more, and bigger, problems.

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  Instead, we should aim to restore the trust between the black community and the police, and implement commonsense reforms that will make our streets safer and the bonds between the police and our neighborhoods stronger.

  Based on my experiences as a pastor and community leader on the south side of Chicago, I propose the following meaningful reforms:

  1. Police officers should strive to become part of the community. My ministry work in one of America’s toughest neighborhoods would produce zero results if we were not fully committed to establishing roots in the community. New Beginnings Church and our urban ministry, Project H.O.O.D. have seen tremendous results—especially with former gang members—because we are seen as a trusted friend and member of the community. The police can draw lessons from our experience. Cops can form better relationships in the black community by actively seeking opportunities to join us in our neighborhoods. Don’t show up just for drug raids. Take part in our community events. Be involved in the schools. Be present and visible for the good moments (and there are plenty such moments in our neighborhoods). Why is it that the only time many on the south side of Chicago see a police officer is when arrests are being made?

  2. Don’t treat the black community as the “enemy.” The ACLU has documented the increase of militarized language in police recruiting materials. We are not at war with the police, despite what the police rhetoric suggests. We are taxpayers and parents. Retool the recruitment language for police so it is not always a stark “us versus them” dichotomy.

  3. Provide more police training in de-escalation. In urban neighborhoods, the last thing we need is a cop intent on ratcheting up the violence or escalating bad situations. Police should shift some of their training to de-escalation. This reform alone would do wonders to establish more trust with the black community.

  4. Require the use of body cameras for police. Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina is taking the lead on the GOP side in crafting police reforms. His entire proposal merits attention, but one idea in particular, the required use of body cameras by police, should have no difficulty garnering broad support. Body cameras worn by the cops have numerous positive effects. Senator Scott’s proposal calls for reducing the grants for law-enforcement agencies in states that fail to punish non-use of body cameras.

  5. Make the police disciplinary records public. One of the positive reforms currently being discussed is releasing the disciplinary records of cops. This reform idea deserves our attention. We have countless public digital databases at our fingertips, with everything from property transactions to licenses of professionals. Why is it so difficult to find out if there are complaints lodged against a police officer? It is worth noting, of course, that Derek Chauvin, the cop who mercilessly kept his knee on George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, had 18 prior complaints lodged against him. What was the nature of those complaints? And why wasn’t he fired along the way? In a society that values transparency, why is it impossible to obtain this information?

  6. Stop rehiring bad cops after they get fired. A sad cycle of abuse has repeated itself across the country. The police unions have, for decades, protected the bad apples in the police force. Even when a cop is fired for misconduct, the system is designed to allow bad cops back into the force. This practice erodes trust and confidence with the black community, and, even more than that, it endangers the good cops—the ones we need and want on our streets.

  The black communities in our inner cities are hurting. Decades of neglect, abuse, and systemic racism have turned many of these neighborhoods into urban wastelands. The police departments, in many cases, have offered a case study in what not to do with the black community. From alienating entire communities to creating unnecessary friction and frustrations, the police have created a deep rift with this community.

  The good news? The reforms I propose are easy to implement and will have an almost immediate positive effect. When it comes to healing those wounds, the police can study the successful methods of black ministry projects in these communities.

  Jesus commands us in Mark 12:31 to love our neighbors as ourselves. The first step is to see others as our neighbors. This simple worldview is the essence of our ministries on the south side of Chicago. And it could be the key to reforming urban police departments.

  

• Reddit Circulates 'China Bootlickers' List After Zoom Licks China's Boots
  Reddit Circulates ‘China Bootlickers’ List After Zoom Licks China’s Boots
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 22:05

  A Reddit user has circulated a ‘China Bootlickers’ list after video chat company Zoom deactivated accounts of prominent pro-democracy Chinese activists based in the U.S.

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  The list, republished below, includes companies which have kowtowed to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by taking actions to censor or restrict pro-democracy content, or otherwise promote CCP talking points. As Bloomberg notes, “Several tech companies were included on the list, including Activision Blizzard, which temporarily banned a gamer who voiced support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrators, and Apple, which removed a mapping app in Hong Kong amid protests and pulled the Taiwan flag emoji from some iPhones.”

  On Thursday, three US lawmakers asked Zoom to clarify its data-collection practices, as well as its relationship with the Chinese government, according to Reuters.

  Representatives Greg Walden, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the ranking member of a consumer subcommittee, sent a letter to Zoom CEO Eric Yuan on Thursday asking him to clarify the company’s data practices, whether any was shared with Beijing and whether it encrypted users’ communications.

  Republican Senator Josh Hawley also wrote to Yuan asking him to “pick a side” between the United States and China.

  …

  The California-based firm has come under heavy scrutiny after three U.S. and Hong Kong-based activists said their accounts had been suspended and meetings disrupted after they tried to hold events related to the anniversary of China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown.

  Zoom said on Friday it was notified of the events and asked to take action by the Chinese government in May and early June. It said it suspended one account in Hong and two in the United States but has now reinstated these accounts and will not allow further requests from China to affect users outside the country. –Reuters

  Hayman Capital Management CIO Kyle Bass said in a Friday tweet that he expects a “significant U.S. Congressional response to #zoom’s shenanigans. They have no defense.”

  I suspect a significant US congressional response to #zoom ‘s shenanigans. They have no defense. #china

  — 🇺🇸Kyle Bass🇺🇸 (@Jkylebass) June 12, 2020

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  The “China Bootlickers” list has been posted several times over the last year, which can be seen below:

  Hall of Bootlickers (via /u/lebbe)

  • Activision / Blizzard: banned player for supporting HK democracy protest. Confiscated all his winnings. Fired his interviewers. Apologized to China: condemned incident, swore to defend China’s national dignity

  • Activision / Blizzard: censor words related to HK protest in WoW

  • Activision / Blizzard: cut livestream when American U team held up pro-HK sign

  • Activision / Blizzard: censor “Free Hong Kong” in twitch chat of PlayHearthstone

  • Activision / Blizzard: ban users in its Hearthstone Twitch chat for pro-Hong Kong statements

  • American Express: changed “Taiwan” to “Taiwan, China” on its website

  • EA DICE: censor “Tiananmen” in Battlefield V chat

  • ESL: warn staff not to discuss HK protests

  • TikTok: censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, Falun Gong

  • TikTok refuses to testify to US Congress about its business in China

  • ZLONGAME: removed guilds with any reference to HK in Second Galaxy M

  • Apple: censor Taiwan flag emoji in iOS in HK

  • Apple: banned HK protest map in App Store. Approved app after backlash. Banned app once again after China hissy fit

  • Apple: banned in Chinese App Store news app that covered HK protest

  • Apple: minimized the seriousness of iOS exploits that enabled China to track Uyghurs, when 1M+ of them are rounded up by China in concentration camps

  • Apple: handed over iCloud data & encryption keys to China

  • Apple: told Apple TV+ creators to avoid portraying China “in a poor light”

  • Apple: Safari browser sends some user IP addresses to Tencent by default

  • Apple refuses to testify to US Congress about its business in China

  • Vans: censor pro-HK democracy design in its shoe design competition

  • NBA (partial entry): rebuked Rockets manager for his pro-HK tweet, saying NBA was “extremely disappointed with Morey’s inappropriate comment.” Backpedalled after backlash, now saying they support Morey’s freedom of speech.

  • Brooklyn Nets: owner decried Rockets GM’s pro-HK freedom tweet

  • Houston Rockets: censored journalist who asked question about freedom of speech after China debacle

  • James Harden: apologized to China on behalf of his GM’s pro-freedom tweet

  • Lebron James: attacked Morey for supporting HK democracy. Wanted Morey punished for it.

  • Philly Sixers: ejected fans for supporting HK

  • Washington Wizards: confiscated “Free Hong Kong” sign

  • Christian Dior: apologize for using “incorrect” China map

  • Disney / ESPN: forbid mention of Chinese politics when discussing Rockets manager’s HK tweet

  • Disney / ESPN: showed map of China on SportsCenter that acknowledged CCP’s claims to nearly entire South China Sea

  • Disney / Marvel: censored Tibetan monk from “Doctor Strange” & turned him into white woman. Movie screenwriter: “if you acknowledge that Tibet is a place & that he’s Tibetan, you risk alienating one billion people who think that that’s bullshit“.

  • Disney: removed non-white characters from Chinese poster of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”

  • Disney / ESPN: told reporter to stand down on covering the NBA-China story the way he wanted

  • Comcast / DreamWorks: movie “Abominable” shows 9 dash line in China map

  • Viacom / Paramount: censor Taiwan flag from the jacket worn by Tom Cruise in new “Top Gun” movie

  • ASICS, Calvin Klein, Coach, Fresh, Givenchy, Pocari Sweat, Valentino, Versace, Swarovski: details here

  • Marriott: apologized & changed “Taiwan” to “Taiwan, China” after China threw a hissy fit

  • Marriott: fired employee who liked tweet from Tibetan group

  • Nike: removed Houston Rockets products from China webstore

  • Cathay Pacific: fired employees for FB posts supporting HK protests.

  • Google: censored pro-HK game “The Revolution of Our Times” from Google Play because it was about a “sensitive event“.

  • Gap: apologized for selling T-shirts IN CANADA that didn’t include Taiwan as part of China

  • Tiffany: removed tweet showing model covering 1 eye after China accused it of supporting HK

  • Mercedes: apologized for quoting Dalai Lama on Instagram

  • American, Delta, United: deleted mention of Taiwan as a country from websites

  • Audi: apologized for using “incorrect” map of China that left off Taiwan

  • Muji: destroyed store catalogs that contain “incorrect” map of China

  • Zara: apologized for listing Taiwan as country

  • Medtronic: apologized for publishing “illegal content” that listed “Republic of China (Taiwan)” as country

  • Ray-Ban: changed “Taiwan” & “Hongkong” to “China Taiwan” & “China Hongkong”

  • Qantas, Air France, Air Canada, British Airways, Malaysia Airlines, Japan Airlines, ANA: changed “Taiwan” to “Taiwan China”

  • Sheraton: banned Taiwan National Day event due to China pressure

  • Shutterstock: censors search for any topics China doesn’t approve: “Taiwan flag,” “dictator,” “yellow umbrella”

  • US universities: don’t talk about 3 Ts: Tibet, Tiananmen, Taiwan

  • US universities: welcome China infiltrations with open arms

  • Leica: released ad on Tiananmen protest. Apologized & distanced itself from ad

  • Reddit: took $150M from Tencent. Removed thread like this

  • Rockhampton, Queensland: censored Taiwan flag in student project

  • Cisco: helped build Great Firewall including module to persecute Falun Gong

  • MGM: changed Red Dawn’s villain from China to N Korea to placate China

  • Global Blue: fired staff for calling Taiwan a country

  • L’Oréal / Lancôme: canceled HK artist concert for her pro-democracy activism

  • US universities: self-censor in fear of offending China

  • Disney: block Winnie the Pooh website in HK

  

• Aussie Cops Protect Captain Cook Statue While London Hides Winston Churchill
  Aussie Cops Protect Captain Cook Statue While London Hides Winston Churchill
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 21:45

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  Police in Sydney, Australia were deployed to form a ring of protection around a statue of Captain Cook, putting to shame Boris Johnson’s UK government, which capitulated by hiding Winston Churchill inside a box.

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  “Heavy police presence protecting the Captain Cook statue in Sydney’s Hyde Park after a last minute change of location to tonight’s Black Lives Matter protest,” tweeted journalist Emily Ritchie. “About 400 peaceful protestors marched, surrounded by a significant number of police.”

  The video clip shows officers forming a protection line around the statue, which is a life-size representation of British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy James Cook.

  Heavy police presence protecting the Captain Cook statue in Sydney’s Hyde Park after a last minute change of location to tonight’s Black Lives Matter protest. About 400 peaceful protestors marched, surrounded by a significant number of police #blacklivesmatteraustralia pic.twitter.com/BpfxCiIw9X

  — Emily Ritchie (@emritchiejourno) June 12, 2020

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  The response was very different to how Boris Johnson’s Conservative government reacted to the desecration of Winston Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square, London.

  After the statue was defaced last weekend, a group of Brits attempted to congregate around the statue to protect it, but were quickly moved on by police.

  The monument was then scrawled with the words “(Churchill) was a racist.” Another man caught on camera removing ‘Black Lives Matter’ signs from the monument was also harassed by police on the orders of a BLM mob.

  CHURCHILL HAS GONE: this is so wrong wrong wrong on every level. Please ⁦@BorisJohnson⁩ ⁦@SadiqKhan⁩ bring the greatest Briton back to the home of democracy NOW pic.twitter.com/ReL4UYUwhb

  — Richard Tice (@TiceRichard) June 12, 2020

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  Now the Churchill statue, as well as the Cenotaph war memorial, have been hidden inside makeshift boxes to “protect” them from the mob.

  In reality, by hiding the statues from public view, the government has capitulated to the mob.

  Churchill’s statue doesn’t look very “permanent” at the moment, Prime Minister. In fact I fail to see the difference between imprisoning him within a grey box and just carting him off to storage – he’s erased from public view either way. https://t.co/MiciLyohbQ pic.twitter.com/rKYGBQtoQn

  — Jack Montgomery (@JackBMontgomery) June 12, 2020

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  *  *  *

  My voice is being silenced by free speech-hating Silicon Valley behemoths who want me disappeared forever. It is CRUCIAL that you support me.

  Please sign up for the free newsletter here. Donate to me on SubscribeStar here.

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• Strait Tensions Soar: Taiwan Test Fires Missiles, Beijing Sends Warplane
  Strait Tensions Soar: Taiwan Test Fires Missiles, Beijing Sends Warplane
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 21:25

  Eight months after we penned a piece titled “Taiwan Warns Of Possible Invasion If China’s Economy Continues To Deteriorate” — a virus pandemic has crippled the global economy and Taiwan on Thursday (June 11) conducted missile tests off several of its coasts as tensions between China and the US are rising in the Taiwan Strait. 

  The South China Morning Post (SCMP) is reporting that Taiwan has test-fired missiles off its eastern and southern coasts as the self-ruled island increases its defense capabilities against mainland China. 

  The tests were held near Taiwan’s eastern county of Taitung and the Jiupeng military base in the southern part of the island on Thursday night. 

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  Local media said the surface-to-air missiles were part of an interceptor system that would shield the island from a guided-missile attack by China. 

  In response to the missile tests, China People’s Liberation Army (PLA) flew a warplane on Friday across the median line in the strait. 

  Taiwan’s defense ministry immediately responded by scrambling fighter jets: 

  “We detected the Chinese Communist Yun-8 aircraft flying southwest into Taiwan this morning and immediately dispatched our fighter jets to shadow it and disperse through radio warning,” the ministry said.

  More confrontation is ahead in the strait, as Taiwan plans to hold annual war drills in July and September.

  The Han Kuang drills “will test the country’s asymmetric capabilities to ward off hostile forces at sea and along its beaches,” the Ministry of National Defense recently said. 

  Beijing considers Taiwan a Chinese province — Taipei has grown even closer to Washington, which has infuriated Chinese officials. 

  From trade war to origins of COVID-19, relations between Washington and Beijing have nosedived, suggesting a new “cold war” and decoupling is underway. As for hotspots in disputed waters this year, the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea appear to be likely areas. 

   

   

  

• We Don't Need No Stinking Vaccine For COVID-19
  We Don’t Need No Stinking Vaccine For COVID-19
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 21:05

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

  A Glaring Omission

  With the 24/7 media circus coverage of Covid-19 I find it particularly interesting that there is an obvious glaring omission of some extremely important facts relative to dealing with a virus, especially one that is allegedly so virulent like this one. Yes, I read all about the critical need to shelter in place, stay inside away from other people, wash your hands constantly, avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth, wear your face mask and by all means observe social distancing if you MUST venture outside for food!

  Then it’s repeated ad infinitum that the ONLY hope we have of ever returning to a semblance of normalcy is to have a vaccine to protect us! Then to add some drama to this narrative the media highlights their death-o-meter scoreboard with the implied threat that you’ll be next IF you don’t obey the rules as dictated by the “experts”.

  But what is assiduously avoided at all cost is any reference to our most potent defense against any virus; our body’s natural immune system. Try as I might I couldn’t find anything about this first line of defense on the World Health Organizations (WHO) website or Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website. It’s as if it doesn’t exist and is completely irrelevant.

  If these organizations were genuinely concerned about the health of citizens they would obviously discuss the vital role a healthy immune system plays in protecting us from illnesses. But since they don’t its obvious some other motive is at work, at least to me, and I strongly suspect to other critical thinkers as well.

  We now know from the science and data that over 90% of the people exposed to Covid-19 have no symptoms at all or at worst a mild cold. The flu vaccines we have are only effective 30% to 60% of the time and the bugs change regularly so a vaccine that worked OK last year may barely work at all this year. Let’s learn some more about our body’s immune system.

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  Virus protection without a vaccine

  There is an enlightening article on Web MD titled: “How to use Your Immune System to Stay Healthy”. That’s a pretty straight forward title now isn’t it? Early on Bruce Polsky, MD, interim chairman department of medicine and chief division of infectious disease at St. Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City says:

  “We are endowed with a great immune system that has been designed evolutionarily to keep us healthy.”

  The article goes on. . .

  “The immune system is your body’s natural defense system. It’s an intricate network of cells, tissues and organs that band together to defend your body against invaders. Those invaders can include bacteria, viruses, parasites, even fungus, all with the potential to make us sick. They are everywhere-in our homes, offices and backyards. . . “

  The truth is no amount of social distancing, hand washing or face mask wearing is going to eliminate our exposure to these various bugs. That’s why we were created with this amazing first line of natural defense.

  Here’s more from Web MD . . .

  “The immune system can recognize millions of different antigens. And it can produce what it needs to eradicate nearly all of them. When it’s working properly, this elaborate defense system can keep health problems ranging from cancer to the common cold at bay. . . “

  Wow! That’s pretty amazing stuff isn’t it! According to Web MD a properly functioning immune system can “keep health problems ranging from cancer to the common cold at bay.” So why isn’t this “science” being included in all the other health recommendations we’re being bombarded with daily? It seems to me that any “expert” worth their salt would be talking about the importance of a healthy immune system to stay healthy.

  But there’s more . . .

  The Web MD article noted that failure to eat a healthy diet, sitting around not exercising, not getting enough sleep and chronic stress can all lead to a compromised immune system. To quote Dr. Polsky again:

  “. . . Lifestyle aspects are very, very important.”

  So if our lifestyle is very, very important to staying healthy as the good doctor says ask yourself this question? Based on the Web M.D. article virtually all the results of the lockdown serve to weaken our immune systems. The stress of unemployment, constant harping about infections and rising death rates, lack of exercise and now a crack in our food distribution system all are known to weaken the human immune system.

  I also find it quite interesting that large groups of people can shop at Walmart, Home Depot or other big box stores but they can’t attend their local church even if it’s a “drive through” service?

  Web M.D. says:

  “Research shows that people with close friendships and strong support systems tend to be healthier than those who lack such supports.”

  During times of crisis people need encouragement and their faith built up more than ever before. Mandating people huddle in fear in their homes with constant media reports of infections and death bombarding them continually is there any wonder peoples immune systems are under severe stress?

  Boosting Your Immune System

  If you would like to boost your immune system consider checking out Dr. Mercola’s website at www.mercola.com . He’s an osteopathic MD with a focus on natural health. There are a variety of simple, low cost resources you can utilize to support good immune system health so you can hopefully fight off the bugs that are a part of everyday life.

  And above all, avoid the main stream media like the plague! Their fear mongering is doing more to harm the nation’s health than any virus ever could! Boost your immune system and laugh at Covid-19 and all the cowering sheeple you see furtively scurrying about with their masks on. Humans were created with a natural immune system that has served them well for thousands of years to combat flu bugs. By following some common sense steps you can ensure your immune system is functioning well and provides the first-line-of-defense that protects 90% of the population.

  

• NYC Proposal Would Defund $1 Billion From NYPD Budget
  NYC Proposal Would Defund $1 Billion From NYPD Budget
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 20:45

  A proposal introduced by New York City Council speaker Corey Johnson and seven other City Council leaders would knock $1 billion off the NYPD’s $6 billion budget.

  “We believe that we can and should work to get to $1 billion in cuts to New York City’s police spending in the Fiscal 2021 budget, an unprecedented reduction that would not only limit the scope of the NYPD, but also show our commitment towards moving away from the failed policing policies of the past,” said Johnson (D) late Friday, according to the Daily News.

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  The giant cut would largely affect police functions such as school safety and homeless outreach, along with reducing the size of the force by nearly 10% from 36,000 to 33,000 via a hiring freeze and not replacing officers who retire. Overtime pay would also be limited.

  In a Friday joint statement with the chairs of the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus and other lawmakers, Johnson’s office said: “We believe that we can and should work to get to $1 billion in cuts to New York City’s police spending in the Fiscal 2021 budget, an unprecedented reduction that would not only limit the scope of the NYPD, but also show our commitment towards moving away from the failed policing policies of the past.”

  BREAKING: NYC Council Speaker Johnson & others in council leadership announce suport for unprecedented proposal to cut $1 billion from NYPD’s $6 billion budget.

  Identified areas include reducing 36,000 officer headcount through attrition, cutting OT, shifting responsibilities. pic.twitter.com/Mm6UDqWi5v

  — Pervaiz Shallwani (@Pervaizistan) June 13, 2020

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  On Thursday and Friday, the Council’s Budget Negotiating Team presented the $1 billion cut to members, who are grappling with a massive shortfall in tax revenue due to COVID-19. Mayor de Blasio, who is opposed to the $1 billion cut, revised his $89.3 billion executive budget in April – making cuts to the Department of Education as well as a popular summer youth employment program.

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  “Before the briefing, members didn’t know if we could cut a billion. The speaker has shown there’s a billion dollars to cut. Now the question is whether Council members have the courage of their convictions,” an anonymous source told the Daily News.

  A second anonymous Coincil source said the legislature is still pondering what to do with the $1 billion which would be freed up by the NYPD cuts – while a third anonymous source said the proposal isn’t a ‘done deal,’ but “the first step in thinking about” transforming the NYPD.

  

• China Makes "Technological Breakthrough" In Hypersonic Scramjet Ground-Test
  China Makes “Technological Breakthrough” In Hypersonic Scramjet Ground-Test
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 20:45

  As tensions rise between China and the US, and the race for hypersonic weapons heats up, the Chinese Communist Party’s daily tabloid newspaper Global Times is reporting “record-breaking progress” has been made in scramjet technology to power its hypersonic weapons. 

  Researchers at the Institute of Mechanics under the Chinese Academy of Science developed and tested new scramjet technology that resulted in a ground test that lasted 600 seconds (considered a “technological breakthrough”). Now, this far outpaced the world record of 210 seconds set by Boeing’s X-51 Waverider using experimental scramjet technology to achieve hypersonic flight.

  A scramjet (supersonic-combustion ramjet) is a ramjet engine in which the airflow through the engine remains supersonic. Global Times notes that developing such an engine that can operate for an extended period remains challenging because advanced heat resistant materials and cooling of the engine are needed for March 5 (>3,800 mph). 

  Beijing officially debuted its DF-17 hypersonic missile at the National Day military parade in October 2019. 

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  Following half-dozen development tests between 2014-2016, the hypersonic weapon was recently tested at Jiuquan Space Launcher Center in Inner Mongolia in 2017. Testing has shown the DF-17 can fly at hypersonic speeds and evade existing missile defense systems, such as America’s anti-ballistic missile defense system called: Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) — it becomes entirely evident the weapon was produced as a deterrent against the US. 

  This weapon is China’s first medium-range ballistic missile with a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) as its payload.

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  The US intelligence community has warned about the regional instabilities that could develop as it appears the weapon is now operational. 

  The Pentagon recently sounded the alarm on the proliferation of hypersonic technological advances that are being made around the world [mainly in China and Russia].

  “Although hypersonic glide vehicles and missiles flying non-ballistic trajectories were first proposed as far back as World War II, technological advances are only now making these systems practicable,” Vice Admiral James Syring, director of the US Missile Defense Agency, said in June 2019, during testimony before the US House Armed Services Committee.

  China’s drive for hypersonic weapons comes as an internal report presented to Chinese President Xi Jinping last month suggest that global anti-China sentiment could be the precursor for a worst-case scenario of armed conflict with the US. 

  Tensions between both superpowers started to deteriorate after the Trump administration blamed China for the virus pandemic that has left more than 100,000 Americans dead, and its economy crashed with tens of millions of people unemployed, now transforming into widespread social unrest across every major US metro. 

  It has become a fact that hypersonic weapons will be a critical technology for the next global conflict, and at the moment it appears China and or Russia have the upper hand in hypersonic development. 

  

• Stockman Calls "Bulls**t" On The Latest COVID-19 Fear-Mongering About Spikes In Texas, Arizona
  Stockman Calls “Bulls**t” On The Latest COVID-19 Fear-Mongering About Spikes In Texas, Arizona
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 20:25

  Authored by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

  Dr. Fauci and the Scarf Lady are not the only Virus Patrol miscreants spreading the Covid Hysteria and thereby empowering the authorities to keep suffocating everyday economic life and personal liberty in America.

  In fact, there is a whole camarilla of current and former health officials, purported disease experts, all-purpose talking heads and other Washington apparatchiks who continue to appear on mainstream media, peddling the hoary tale that coronavirus is some kind of horror flick monster: It purportedly just keeps springing from its Lockdown grave – whack-a-mole fashion – the instant officialdom relaxes its quarantine edicts.

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  Call these people the “groomers” of Big Pharma, and their job is to keep public fears on the boil so that the demand for high-priced treatments, cures and preventative vaccines becomes overwhelming. And given that the Covid is now rapidly succumbing to the exhaustion of its infection cycle and the summertime sun, their exact current mission is one of bridging the gap.

  That is, finding and publicizing local outbreaks and “hot spots” during the months just ahead so that the Virus Patrol will remain in full control of policy and the narrative until the Covid makes its forecasted second wave rebound during next fall’s flu season.

  After all, they desperately need these hot spots to keep the aggregate narrative alive because it is visibly collapsing by the day.

  Back in early May, for instance, the NYT breathlessly carried a leaked study from the Trump Administration that projected a massive surge of new infections and a near doubling of daily death rates by early June relative to levels than extant:

  As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths over the next several weeks. The daily death toll will reach about 3,000 on June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times, a 70 percent increase from the current number of about 1,750.

  The projections, based on government modeling pulled together by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases a day currently.

  The numbers underscore a sobering reality: The United States has been hunkered down for the past seven weeks to try slowing the spread of the virus, but reopening the economy will make matters worse.

  Needless to say, that one went down the memory hole ages ago (i.e. around Memorial Day). As of June 10, in fact, actual daily averages for the month to date were:

  • 827 deaths per day, representing a 53% decline, not a 70% increase;

  • 20,694 new cases per day, representing a 17% decline, not an 8X increase;

  In other words, these Washington modelers (this one was prepared by FEMA) couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with the antiaircraft guns Chairman Kim uses to dispatch his adversaries. So to keep the Covid-Hysteria alive, they send out the hot spot “groomers”.

  On of the most mendacious of these groomers is Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who was the Donald’s first FDA commissioner and is an alleged pedigreed “conservative” with a berth at the American Enterprise Institute to burnish his numerous sinecures with Big Pharma.

  Gottlieb is also a CNBC regular, and yesterday, sitting astride a screen crawler which read “Texas reports second day of record hospitalizations”, he was busy promulgating the “hot spot” news about two red states, whose merely semi-craven GOP governors have belatedly attempted to get their economies back in business:

  When you look at hotspot regions like Arizona and Texas, they have to be concerned, particularly areas around Houston right now. They could lose control of this very quickly,” says @ScottGottliebMD on balancing re-opening with public health.

  We call bullshit!

  Gottlieb was peddling a pimple on the elephant’s ass because, apparently, cable TV audiences generally and bubble vision’s especially, were born yesterday. That is, they are infantile victims of recency and confirmation biases and will apparently believe anything served up in a context-free modality.

  The truth is, there is nothing worrisome whatsoever going on in Arizona and Texas beyond the fact that the coronavirus started its inexorable spread in these interior states later than on the East and Left coasts, and is therefore cresting slightly later, as well.

  But as of June 8, the count of infected cases and WITH Covid deaths in Arizona stood at 27,678 and 1,047, respectively. Those figures a hot spot do not make, nor do they offer any reason for not getting the state’s boot-heel off the economy ASAP.

  Relative to the USA as a whole and the New York epicenter, Arizona’s figures per 100,000 population compare as follows as of June 8:

  • Infected cases Arizona: 375;

  • Infected cases USA: 596;

  • Infected cases New York: 1,963

  • WITH Covid deaths Arizona: 14.2;

  • WITH-Covid deaths USA: 32.3;

  • WITH-Covid deaths New York: 126.0;

  In other words, Arizona’s mortality rate is less than half of the US average and only 11% of that for New York. So why is it a worrisome “hot spot” by the lights of Virus Patrol shills like Gottlieb?

  Indeed, the WITH-Covid mortality rate in Arizona stands at nearly rock bottom, clocking in at at just one-fifth to one-half of the mortality rates in much as European Christendom. To wit, current rates per 100,000 include:

  • Belgium: 83.1;

  • United Kingdom: 60.2;

  • Spain: 58.0;

  • Italy: 56.3;

  • Sweden: 47.5;

  • France: 44.9;

  • Netherlands: 35.3;

  • Arizona: 14.2;

  But when context doesn’t matter, of course, any pimple can be depicted as a large boulder. Thus, the number of new cases in Arizona is allegedly soaring, suggesting that the state has jumped the gun letting its citizens out of house arrest too soon.

  In fact, during the first 8 days of June, Arizona reported 7,742 new cases – a figure which is sharply higher than the 2,189 new cases reported for the last eight days of April, for example.

  But that gain is entirely a function of the testing rate and then some. Thus, during the June 1 to June 8 span, the state reported 62,825 new tests, implying an infection rate of 12.3%.

  By contrast, during April 22 to April 30 the state reported only 15,185 new tests (one-fourth of the June figure), implying an infection rate of 14.4%.

  So the state is testing a lot more, as it has been instructed to do by Washington, and such accelerated testing is generating a falling infection rate!

  And that’s not the half of it. By now there are more than enough antibody tests of different US populations to be reasonably certain that in a state like Arizona with a population of 7.38 million that there have been far more infected cases than the 27,678 cases reported through June 8.

  Generally, antibody tests show infection rates of 5-20% in the general population, which would imply total cases – most of which remained asymptomatic or resulted in mild illnesses – of between 370,000 and 1.5 million for Arizona.

  So, actually, higher reported cases daily may mean nothing at all as to the current status of the virus among the population. More likely, it actually means that what is already there is being slowly discovered after the fact; it’s stale, irrelevant old news, not an alarming new development, to say nothing of evidence of a hot spot.

  Indeed, the latter is a meaningless but loaded term, honed for TV talking points, but is incapable of conveying any meaningful information about context at all. That is, the real test is how does what’s happening with the coronavirus now compare with year-in-and-year-out illness, hospitalization, disease and mortality trends?

  Self-evidently, you do not empower the state to put its citizens under house arrest and destroy the livelihoods of millions of workers and tens of thousands of small businesses on account of a bad run of seasonal illnesses that leaves more people than usual home in bed or even heading to the hospital for treatment.

  To the contrary, this whole Lockdown Nation thing is about the modern equivalent of the Black Death – the presence of a virulent killer that can takedown the young, the old, the healthy, the sick and all categories between with equal alacrity.

  But, again, there is nothing to support that Grim Reaper notion in the data, and most especially not the “hot spot” flavor of the week in Texas and Arizona.

  The mortality rate from all causes for Arizona for the four months from January through the end of April (latest available) is shown below.

  Naturally, the total mortality rate surmounts the cause of death attribution and coding issues; and it means that unless these total death rates are significantly elevated from the norm, then nothing unusual – or at least worthy of drastic quarantine policies–is actually going on.

  On a per 100,000 basis, the Arizona’s total mortality rates for the first four months of the year have been as follows:

  • 2016: 293;

  • 2017: 277:

  • 2018: 297;

  • 2019: 285:

  • 2020: 301;

  The above does not indicate the Black Plague at loose. The tiny elevation in 2020 relative to the previous four years is just statistical noise!

  Moreover, there is no new signal coming out of this “noise” owing to the higher testing and infection rates being reported in recent days. Again, the evidence for that is in the state’s own published data on hospitalization rates, among others.

  Between March 23 and June 1, Arizona consistently reported new WITH-Covid hospitalization cases of between 40 and 60 per day on a statewide basis.

  During June 3 through June 8, however, the number of new hospitalizations daily has dwindled to 34, 19, 17, 10, 4 and 5, respectively.

  The last few days, in fact, have had the lowest new hospitalizations since before the Donald’s malpracting doctors triggered the Covid Hysteria on March 13.

  So, hot spot my eye!

  In this connection, they also keep trotting out the hoary old claim that the hospitals are in danger of being overrun with new cases – per the crawler on the screen yesterday during Gottleib’s appearance on bubble vision.

  Alas, it never happened previously in Arizona and is not remotely in danger of happening now. Even during the peak of new hospitalizations between April 20 and May 8, the utilization rate of hospital intensive care beds rose from 72% to 78% and has remained at that level ever since.

  Finally, it is worth noting that Arizona’s WITH-Covid mortality data show the same dramatic skew toward the elderly, as is true with the rest of the country. Fully 77% of the Covid deaths in Arizona have been among the 65 and older population, which comprises just 17% of the state’s overall population.

  That fact alone, of course, militates strongly against the across-the-board stay-at-home and general quarantine orders in the first place.

  The Arizona WITH-Covid mortality rate through June 9 breaks out as follows by age cohorts. That is to say, anyone under 55 years old driving to the Scottsdale Fashion Mall would have had a greater chance of being killed in an auto accident than being felled by the Covid:

  Deaths Per 100,000 population:

  • <20 years: 0.1;

  • 20-44 years: 2.1;

  • 45-54 years: 7.5;

  • 55-64 years: 14.9;

  • 65+ years: 66.3;

  With respect to Texas, it’s the same story. There is no “hot spot”, period.

  Its reported cases and deaths through June 8 are actually far lower than those for Arizona and in the sub-basement relative to the overall USA figures, to say nothing of the nursing-home based disaster-data reported for New York and New Jersey.

  That is, the number of infected cases in Texas amounts to 256 per 100,000 or 68% of the Arizona rate, 42% of the overall USA rate and just 13% of the rate of infected cases among the New York state population.

  Likewise, the WITH-Covid mortality rate through June 8 in Texas was 6.2 per 100,000. That’s just 43% of the Arizona rate, 19% of the USA average and only 5% of the New York state rate.

  So Texas isn’t remotely a “hot spot” or some kind of warning about reopening too soon, and is actually a thundering rebuke of the entire Lockdown Nation narrative.

  That is, Texas was late and tepid about the lockdown, and among the first to begin “reopening” in early May.

  Yet its reported infected case rate of 256 per 100,000 is just 10% of the real “hot spot” rate of 2,477 per 100,000 in the five boroughs of New York City; and its mortality rate of 6.2 per 100,000 population is just 3% of New York City’s 196 per 100,000 rate.

  So for crying out loud, with that kind of yawning gap and rock bottom absolute level, what is this clown, Scott Gottlieb, doing on bubble vision warning about Covid dangers in Texas?

  Answer: He’s grooming the sheeples in order to keep the Killer Covid narrative alive and the money and legal immunities flowing to the drug companies chasing cures and vaccines.

  It goes without saying, course, that the alleged surge in new cases reported in Texas during recent days is just as bogus as the claims about Arizona.

  Yes, new cases reported during June 1 to June 8 averaged 1,416 per day or about 61% higher than the rate of 877 per day reported for April 22 to April 30. Except, the number of new tests also rose by about 60% from 113,500 to 168,500, leaving the infected rate virtually unchanged at a very low 6.7%.

  Again, if you want to talk “hot spots”, try New York City. The the infected rate per test has run north of 20% in the Bronx, for example.

  So the question recurs. Why are people like Scott Gottlieb out pimping the Killer Covid story in the face overwhelming evidence that it it nothing of the kind.

  Perhaps, it might be noted that Gottlieb went straight from medical school to various jobs at the FDA before becoming commissioner in 2017, and then heading out the revolving door to Pfizer’s Board of Directors in May 2019.

  And, yes, here’s the list of the top five firms being supported by billions from Washington in the race for a Covid vaccine, which may or may not happen, but whether safe or not will be of no never-mind to Big Pharma.

  After all, Washington has already indemnified them against lawsuits; pretty much guaranteed that they can name their charge per dose; and will be doing all it can to make getting a tap on the arm from one or more of the Big Pharma competitors a mandatory duty of citizenship.

  Call it what you will, but don’t call it honest capitalism. And chalk it up as still another blow to the idea of limited government and personal liberty.

  The five companies are Moderna, a Massachusetts-based biotechnology firm, which Dr. Fauci said he expected would enter into the final phase of clinical trials next month; the combination of Oxford University and AstraZeneca, on a similar schedule; and three large pharmaceutical companies: Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Pfizer. Each is taking a somewhat different approach.

  Read more of Stockman’s analysis here.

  

• US Has Yet To Cut WHO Funding Despite Trump Move To "Terminate" Relationship
  US Has Yet To Cut WHO Funding Despite Trump Move To “Terminate” Relationship
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 20:05

  The Hill reports that as of the close of this week the United States still hasn’t cut funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) despite President Trump controversially vowing to pull the plug on all US funding, which provides the bulk of the UN organization’s budget. 

  Trump made the “final” statement on May 29 amid widespread international criticism against the global health body for essentially being asleep at the wheel while the coronavirus outbreak rippled across the world. US officials have also repeatedly charged the WHO is in Beijing’s pocket, which they say is the reason WHO leaders dithered while the disease raged in Wuhan, soon spreading far outside China’s borders, before it was belatedly labeled a pandemic.

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  The US president had stated: “Because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms, we will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving, urgent global public health needs.”

  WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had immediately urged the administration not the take the drastic action in the middle of a pandemic: “We regret the decision of the President of the United States to order a halt in funding to the World Health Organization,” he said.

  And now, as The Hill reports, “Two weeks later, no steps toward a formal withdrawal have been taken. A WHO spokesman told The Hill that the agency had received no formal notification that the United States would withdraw.”

  “Senior WHO officials said they continue their relationships with American agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH),” the report underscores. 

  It’s possible that Trump is under pressure from within his own administration as well as Republican allies not to ultimately sever funding. Perhaps the president was just content to score political points with his base in the shock announcement of two weeks ago. Or it’s possibly the slowness of red tape when it comes to pulling the funding.

  By far the largest single WHO funder, America’s contribution is at about 15%, which approaches a billion dollars for the current two-year budge period.

  Executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, Mike Ryan, said there’s been no change so far: “We rely heavily on our colleagues and institutions in the U.S. like CDC, like NIH and like the hundreds of collaborating centers that this organization has across the United States,” Ryan said Monday. “We will continue to do that until we are otherwise instructed or informed.”

  

• Colorado Bill Requires "Re-Education" For Parents Who Refuse The COVID-19 Vaccine
  Colorado Bill Requires “Re-Education” For Parents Who Refuse The COVID-19 Vaccine
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 19:45

  Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

  Are you ready for re-education camps in the United States? Colorado has introduced a bill that would “re-educate” parents who refuse to vaccinate their child with the coronavirus vaccine.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  The bill forces all doctors and medical staff to give vaccinations with no exemptions, even if they are in a situation where they believe it would not be in that child’s best interest. The bill’s current version, however, does not list any sanctions or punishments for medical staff that refuse, according to Life News. 

  The bill just passed through a committee in Colorado (20-14) to reduce available exemptions on vaccinations for school-age children (making vaccines mandatory). This bill offers “online education modules” for parents who want a different vaccination schedule than what the state demands. Submitting a “certificate of completion” from the re-education classes is one way to receive the state-sanctioned vaccine exemption.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  This plandemic was never about health, it was about forcing everyone to get a vaccine: an injection of whatever the hell the ruling class decided to put in the vaccine.

  These vaccines are not being required for the health of anyone unless it’s for the health of Big Pharma and the ruling class.

  What happens if the “re-education” fails to convince a person to get the vaccines? It’s hard to say, but these types of concentration camps (and be honest with yourself, you know that’s what they are) should be condemned by anyone who wishes to be free. This is utterly insane.  The limits the governments are now going to in order to force people to get vaccinated is unbelievable.

  But, we knew this was coming. We knew that the coronavirus was a scam to force everyone to take the COVID (certification of vaccine ID) under Agenda 2020. Beware, this could very well be what more religious people are calling “the mark of the Beast”, and people commenting on this Colorado bill have already made it clear that “people won’t be able to go to work or school” unless they get the vaccine.

  This is the new normal they are conditioning us to accept. This is why they need martial law. Your chains are about to get much shorter unless you wake up and start to extract yourself from their system.  There isn’t much time left.  The government is not going to help you out, after all, they are the ones writing the laws while they have the police and military enforce them at gunpoint. Wake up, or be enslaved.

  

• Cornell Law Prof Says There's A "Coordinated Effort" To Have Him Fired After He Criticized Black Lives Matter
  Cornell Law Prof Says There’s A “Coordinated Effort” To Have Him Fired After He Criticized Black Lives Matter
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 19:25

  Recall, it was just days ago that we pointed out Cornell professor and friend of Zero Hedge Dave Collum was publicly shamed by Cornell for daring to express the “wrong” opinion about current events on social media. Now, there’s a second Cornell professor coming under fire for his critique of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

  Cornell Law School professor William A. Jacobson has challenged any student or faculty member to a public debate about the Black Lives Matter movement after he says liberals on campus have launched a “coordinated effort” to have him fired from his job. At least 15 emails from alumni have been sent to the dean, demanding that action be taken, according to Fox News. 

  “There is an effort underway to get me fired at Cornell Law School, where I’ve worked since November 2007, or if not fired, at least denounced publicly by the school,” Jacobson wrote on Thursday. “I condemn in the strongest terms any insinuation that I am racist.”

  Jacobson founded the website Legal Insurrection and says he’s had an “awkward relationship” with the university for years as a result. The recent outrage comes as a result of two posts he recently made on his site:

  • Reminder: “Hands up, don’t shoot” is a fabricated narrative from the Michael Brown case (June 4, 2020)
  • The Bloodletting and Wilding Is Part of An Agenda To Tear Down The Country (June 3, 2020)

  “Those posts accurately detail the history of how the Black Lives Matters Movement started, and the agenda of the founders which is playing out in the cultural purge and rioting taking place now,” Jacobson said. 

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  

  He recently wrote on his blog: “Living as a conservative on a liberal campus is like being the mouse waiting for the cat to pounce. For over 12 years, the Cornell cat did not pounce. Though there were frequent and aggressive attempts by outsiders to get me fired, including threats and harassment, it always came from off campus.”

  “Not until now, to the best of my knowledge, has there been an effort from inside the Cornell community to get me fired,” he says.

  “The effort appears coordinated, as some of the emails were in a template form. All of the emails as of Monday were from graduates within the past 10 years,” he continued. Jacobson’s “clinical faculty colleagues, apparently in consultation with the Black Law Students Association” drafted and published a letter denouncing ‘commentators, some of them attached to Ivy League Institutions, who are leading a smear campaign against Black Lives Matter.’”

  Cornell responded, backhandedly defending the Professor’s right to his own opinion:

  “…the Law School’s commitment to academic freedom does not constitute endorsement or approval of individual faculty speech. But to take disciplinary action against him for the views he has expressed would fatally pit our values against one another in ways that would corrode our ability to operate as an academic institution.”

  “This is not just about me. It’s about the intellectual freedom and vibrancy of Cornell and other higher education institutions, and the society at large. Open inquiry and debate are core features of a vibrant intellectual community,” he stated.

  “I challenge a representative of those student groups and a faculty member of their choosing to a public debate at the law school regarding the Black Lives Matter Movement, so that I can present my argument and confront the false allegations in real-time rather than having to respond to baseless community email blasts.”

  “I condemn in the strongest terms any insinuation that I am racist, and I greatly resent any attempt to leverage meritless accusations in hopes of causing me reputational harm. While such efforts might succeed in scaring others in a similar position, I will not be intimidated,” Jacobson concluded.

  

• Virginia Senator Told Police To Stand Down Before Statue Collapse That Left Man In A Coma
  Virginia Senator Told Police To Stand Down Before Statue Collapse That Left Man In A Coma
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 19:05

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  Virginia Senator Louise Lucas told Portsmouth City police officers to stand down and urged Black Lives Matter protesters to “wreck” a statue that was later toppled and struck a man in the head, leaving him in a coma.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  Shocking video footage of the incident shows one of the four bronze soldiers on the Confederate monument being torn down by an angry mob, only to immediately strike a man in the head, leaving his skull split open.

  The victim was later named as BLM protester Chris Greene, who remains critically ill in a coma.

  HD video of the whole incident. pic.twitter.com/OmJYFcjJBP

  — Kneepitwyatt (@animegirlpits) June 11, 2020

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  It has now emerged that Senator Louise Lucas was responsible for inciting the mob to target the statue.

  A video clip shows Senator Lucas wearing a full face covering as she tells the crowd that the police cannot intervene because the monument is on city property.

  “This is city property! I’m Louise Lucas! They cannot arrest them because the city owns this property, they been paying for that!” she says.

  “Come July 1 they can take it down anyway. These police officers cannot arrest them for standing on city property, so I’m gonna stand right here and see what’s gonna happen.”

  Lucas then reveals her face to police before continuing.

  Democrat Virginia State Senator Louise Lucas orders Portsmouth City police officers to stand down as Black Lives Matter demonstrators attempt to destroy a Confederate monument standing in the city. Video courtesy of Black Lives Matter 757 Facebook page. pic.twitter.com/LIrbxHGiUp

  — Frankie👌🏻Stockes (@stockes76) June 11, 2020

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  “This is city property and [Mayor] John Rowe knows it, [City Manager] Dr. Patton knows it. And if they’d have listened to the Vice Mayor and Shannon Glover when they introduced [removing] this [statue] thing to the City Council in the first place they could’ve put a tarp over this thing and all of this would’ve been resolved it wouldn’t even have been necessary. So if the city had done what they were supposed to do these citizens wouldn’t have to do it. So there you go!”

  She then openly incites the mob to take down the statue, telling them, “Go ahead wreck it!”

  Despite Portsmouth Vice Mayor Lisa Lucas-Burke telling the mob that the city council would be meeting to determine the statue’s fate, almost certainly resulting in its removal, Lucas escalated the situation, asserting, “But this is city property and anybody who pays taxes in this city got a right to be on their property. To hell with city council!”

  “That’s alright, the city has had 3 years to cover it, y’all cover it!” she added.

  The crowd then shouted “you heard her!” before the statue was targeted later that evening and Greene was left fighting for his life.

  The council would have almost certainly decided to remove the statue anyway, but because the mob couldn’t wait a few weeks and wanted to carry out their ritualistic destruction of America’s heritage, a man is now on the verge of death.

  *  *  *

  My voice is being silenced by free speech-hating Silicon Valley behemoths who want me disappeared forever. It is CRUCIAL that you support me. Please sign up for the free newsletter here. Donate to me on SubscribeStar here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.

  

• Daily Briefing – June 12, 2020
  Daily Briefing – June 12, 2020

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 18:55

  Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal and Real Vision managing editor Ed Harrison discuss today’s undulating recovery as global equities tried to regain ground lost in yesterday’s market rout. Raoul and Ed explore why today’s snapback wasn’t as strong as expected and Raoul places this discussion within the context of his “unfolding” thesis. In the intro Jack Farley discusses the VIX and a daring attempt by Hertz bondholders to take advantage of the moment.

  

• COVID-19 Lockdowns Spark 41% Collapse In Black-Owned Businesses In America
  COVID-19 Lockdowns Spark 41% Collapse In Black-Owned Businesses In America
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 18:45

  Widespread lockdowns across the country shuttered many small businesses for months. Stores, factories, and many other companies closed due to government-enforced public health orders or because of a rapid shift in demand. A new report from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) provides the first analysis of lockdown impacts on small businesses, makes a shocking discovery that African-American owned businesses plunged by 41%. 

  NBER commissioned the new report titled “The Impact of Covid-19 on Small Business Owners: Evidence of Early-Stage Losses from the April 2020 Current Population Survey” — shows active business owners in the US declined by 3.3 million or 22% from February to April because of “unprecedented” economic impacts of lockdowns. The decline in small business owners was the “largest on record,” and losses felt across all industries. 

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  The report said African-American businesses were hit the hardest, recorded a 41% decline of black owners from February to April. Next were Latino owners, fell 32%, and Asian business owners dropped by 26%. 

  Immigrant business owners plummeted 36%, and female-owned businesses fell by 25%. These findings of early-stage losses to small businesses, so far, outlines how minority businesses were crushed during the lockdowns. 

  “The negative early-stage impacts on minority- and immigrant-owned businesses, if prolonged, may be problematic for broader racial inequality because of the importance of minority businesses for local job creation,” said the report’s author, Robert Fairlie of the University of California at Santa Cruz Department of Economics.

  In a separate report, we noted how the virus-induced economic downturn could result in at least 52% of small businesses closing up shop in the next six months. 

  For readers, it’s essential to understand that nearly half of all US jobs originate from small businesses. This all suggests the quick economic recovery narrative pitched by the Trump administration and Wall Street is bullshit. ​​​​​​

  

• Former Steve Jobs Advisor Says Facebook Is "Destroying The Very Fabric Of Human Relationships"
  Former Steve Jobs Advisor Says Facebook Is “Destroying The Very Fabric Of Human Relationships”
  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Fri, 06/12/2020 – 18:25

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  A former advisor to Steve Jobs warns that Facebook is “destroying the very fabric of human relationships” by making its users become addicted to anger.

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  During a question and answer session at the 2020 CogX conference, Joanna Hoffman was asked about the cult of leadership within Silicon Valley.

  “As I look at Facebook, for example, I keep thinking are they really that ignorant or is this motivated by something … darker than what appears?” she said.

  Hoffman went on to accuse Facebook of “destroying the very fabric of democracy, destroying the very fabric of human relationships and peddling in an addictive drug called anger.”

  “You know it’s just like tobacco, it’s no different than the opioids,” she added.

  “We know anger is addictive, we know we can attract people to our platform and get engagement if we get them pissed off enough. So therefore what, we should capitalize on that each and every time?”

  While Hoffman was talking about Facebook, much of the same charges could be made against Twitter.

  Twitter has become a monstrous echo chamber of hysterical nonsense controlled by outrage mobs who abuse the platform to threaten criminal acts as well as intimidating, doxxing and attempting to ruin people’s lives for the sin of holding an alternate opinion.

  Much criticism of social media is framed in the context of its “threat to democracy,” despite the fact that both Twitter and Facebook are more censorious than ever, with the overwhelming target being conservatives and anyone who offends woke jihadists.

  In reality, the real damage being done by these platforms is to people’s mental health, to the cohesion of a functioning society, and to the concept of free speech itself.

  *  *  *

  My voice is being silenced by free speech-hating Silicon Valley behemoths who want me disappeared forever. It is CRUCIAL that you support me. Please sign up for the free newsletter here. Donate to me on SubscribeStar here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.

  

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