US Seeks Forfeiture of the Oil from IRGC Tanker

A civil forfeiture complaint is merely an allegation. The United States bears the burden of proving that the oil in question is subject to forfeiture in a civil forfeiture proceeding. Funds successfully forfeited with a connection to a state sponsor of terrorism may in whole or in part be directed to the United States Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund (http://www.usvsst.com/) after the conclusion of the case.

NEW YORK – The United States filed a forfeiture complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia alleging that all oil aboard a Liberian-flagged vessel, the M/T Achilleas (Achilleas), is subject to forfeiture based on U.S. terrorism forfeiture laws. This investigation was led by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) New York and the FBI’s Minneapolis office.

U.S. Looks to Courts to Seize 2 Million Barrels of Alleged ...

The complaint alleges a scheme involving multiple entities affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the IRGC-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) to covertly ship Iranian oil to a customer abroad. Participants in the scheme attempted to disguise the origin of the oil using ship-to-ship transfers, falsified documents and other means, and provided a fraudulent bill of lading to deceive the owners of the Achilleas into loading the oil in question.

The complaint alleges in part that the oil constitutes the property of, or a “source of influence” over, the IRGC and the IRGC-QF, both of which have been designated by the United States as foreign terrorist organizations. The documents allege that profits from oil sales support the IRGC’s full range of nefarious activities, including the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery, support for terrorism, and a variety of human rights abuses, at home and abroad.

“This latest civil forfeiture action exemplifies the remarkable work of this multi-agency task force that works tirelessly toward furthering our shared goal of protecting the homeland from regimes that threaten our national security,” said Special Agent in Charge Peter C. Fitzhugh for HSI New York. “This investigation sends a message that the attempted circumvention of U.S. sanctions by the IRGC-QF will not be tolerated. HSI will continue to work with our partners and utilize the full scope of our authorities to disrupt the attempts of hostile countries and regimes to generate profits from oil sales used to support terrorism and the proliferation and delivery of weapons of mass destruction.”

“Iran uses profits from its petroleum sector to fund the malign activities of the IRGC-QF, a designated terrorist group,” said Special Agent in Charge Michael F. Paul of the FBI’s Minneapolis Field Office. “The FBI will continue to prioritize the enforcement of sanctions, and we applaud the efforts of our agents and partners on this investigation.”

“The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia will continue working with our law enforcement partners to stem the flow of illicit oil from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Qods Force,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Michael R. Sherwin. “We will use all available tools, including our jurisdiction to seize and forfeit assets located abroad, to combat funding for terrorists and those who would do harm to the United States.”

“The forfeiture complaint filed today serves as a reminder that the IRGC and IRGC-QF continue to exert significant control over the sale of Iranian oil,” said Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers for the National Security Division. “As we have demonstrated in the past, the department will deploy all tools at its disposal to ensure that the IRGC and IRGC-QF cannot use profits from the sale of Iranian oil to fund terrorism and other activities that threaten the safety and security of all Americans.”

A civil forfeiture complaint is merely an allegation. The United States bears the burden of proving that the oil in question is subject to forfeiture in a civil forfeiture proceeding. Funds successfully forfeited with a connection to a state sponsor of terrorism may in whole or in part be directed to the United States Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund after the conclusion of the case.

HSI New York and the FBI’s Minneapolis Field Office are leading the investigation of Iranian petroleum shipments. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael P. Grady and Brian P. Hudak of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and Trial Attorney David Lim of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section of the National Security Division are prosecuting the case, with support from Paralegal Specialist Brian Rickers and Legal Assistant Jessica McCormick of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. The Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section’s Program Operations Staff of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division has provided extensive assistance throughout the investigation.

Biden Leaving Troops in Afghanistan Past the May Deadline

For many many months, the Trump administration was negotiating a peace deal with the Taliban. Frankly, all that the Taliban has agreed to, they have violated. Trump also issued a schedule to lower troop levels in Afghanistan to only a small tight residual number in May of 2021 along with contractors. With the new possible threat(s) of the Taliban and their growing connection to al Qaeda, Biden has decided to leave troop levels in the region at the present level with an increase in Syria and possibly Iraq. All the while, Iran just hosted a Taliban leader for talks where the topic(s) are unknown. Further, Taliban officials have been meeting in Moscow with Russian officials. Those details are found here. 

President Biden also has another immediate issue before him and that is the release of a U.S. contractor that went missing in Afghanistan about a year ago. Mark Frerichs, a navy veteran went missing about a year ago while he was working as a contractor on an engineering project. It is thought he is in the custody of the Haqqani network. The U.S. State Department is offering a $5 million reward that leads to Frerichs’ return. 

So, it is rather fitting that just this week, a very old FOIA request for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld documents have been released. Frankly, the questions which were referred to at the Pentagon as ‘snowflakes’ reflects his frustration of the layers of bureaucracy  within the Department of Defense and his anger at getting real answers and challenging the quality of intelligence reports. Sound familiar? It is clearly a problem that after 20+ years has not found a quality solution. Just read a few of his snowflakes and judge for your self.

***Donald H. Rumsfeld - U.S. PRESIDENTIAL HISTORY

35 of the most notable items from the new collection is below from the National Archives. 

A follow-on DNSA publication covering the rest of Rumsfeld’s tenure as secretary will appear through ProQuest later in 2021.

One such snowflake was written on March 3, 2003. At 8:16 AM, Rumsfeld wrote to Senior Military Assistant LTG Bantz J. Craddock and Department of Defense General Counsel William Haynes with the subject “KSM”. He wanted to know, “Do we know where the information to find Khalid Sheikh Mohammed came from? Was it from GTMO detainees?” There is no response from either Craddock or Haynes in the DOD release to the Archive, though Rumsfeld’s question is likely a push back to the false claims made by CIA Director George Tenet that the Agency’s resort to torture of Abu Zubaydah led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence torture report would later reveal that key intelligence on KSM as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks came from the FBI’s non-coercive, rapport-building interrogation of Abu Zubaydah.[1] This success was prior to the CIA’s contract psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, taking over the interrogation at the CIA “Detention Site Green” in Thailand, which was created to house Zubaydah in 2002.  Their approach to Zubaydah would include 83 water board sessions yet fail to produce any valuable intelligence.  CIA clandestine services chief Jose Rodriguez (and perhaps Gina Haspel, who would later become DCI, though CIA redactions of documents continue to obscure her role) ordered the destruction of the torture videotapes, commenting that “the heat from destoying [sic] is nothing compared to what it would be if the tapes ever got into public domain.”

Later on March 3, under the subject “Contingencies”, Rumsfeld wrote to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, stating, “We need to plan what we will do if Saddam Hussein is captured. We need to plan what we will do if we catch an imposter.” There is no record of Feith’s answer in the DOD release to the Archive.

Throughout Rumsfeld’s tenure, his snowflakes circulated daily through the highest levels of the Pentagon. With scant limitations on their subject matter, the all-encompassing documents are sometimes an hourly paper trail inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense during six years of tremendous consequence for U.S. foreign policy. The declassified documents also provide an account that at times contradicts DOD public statements.  For example, The Washington Post published a selection of the memos in the six part series “The Afghanistan Papers” in September 2019 revealing that officials misled the American public about the war in Afghanistan.

The entire corpus of snowflakes also details many aspects of the day-to-day operations of the Pentagon, the modernization of the U.S. armed forces, and Rumsfeld’s personal agenda against bureaucracy. “Bureaucracy is driving people nuts,” he wrote in an April 8, 2002, memo at 7:41AM. “If we can take two or three layers out of this place, we will be a lot better off.” In a separate April 8 letter, the secretary suggested cutting all major Pentagon programs by at least 20 percent. (The DOD budget increased by 37.54 percent between FY2001 and FY2006.) On March 11, 2002, Rumsfeld wrote to colleagues, “I am getting tired of seeing the word ‘joint’ everywhere.”

Rumsfeld, Snowflake by Snowflake - Open Source with ...

Other topics in the collection include:

  • the military budgeting process and efforts to rein in defense spending;
  • military planning, procurement, and expenditures;
  • nuclear issues – weapons, proliferation, safety;
  • decision making on military wages, benefits, tours of duty, and veterans issues;
  • military intelligence;
  • Defense Department relations with the CIA and Homeland Security;
  • Rumsfeld’s relations with the State Department and National Security Council;
  • U.S. relations with NATO;
  • U.S. military relations with Russia, former Soviet republics, and other countries;
  • Rumsfeld’s interactions with the news media, Congress, and the public;
  • Guantanamo detainees, interrogation, and torture;
  • concerns about the International Criminal Court and U.S. liability for war crimes;
  • the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other terrorists;
  • the Joint Strike Fighter program; and
  • the emergency landing of a U.S. EP-3 at Hainan Island in 2001

Donald Rumsfeld’s Snowflakes, Part 1: The Pentagon and U.S. Foreign Policy, 2001-2003 will be a critical research tool for historians and will be available through many college and research libraries. Part II, which covers the last three years of Rumsfeld’s tenure as secretary of defense from 2004 to 2006, will be published in 2021. Learn more about accessing the Digital National Security Archive through your library online and how to request a free trial here.

 

March 11, 2002
April 8, 2002
September 12, 2003
October 23, 2003

A few more:

October 10, 2001
Rumsfeld requests a daily report on the location of Osama bin Laden.

 

November 8, 2001
Rumsfeld inquires: “Why doesn’t Pakistan sever its relationship with [sic] Taliban?”

 

November 29, 2001
Rumsfeld accuses career employees in the OSD of undermining his decisions and working too slowly.

 

January 5, 2002
Rumsfeld complains to George Tenet about the CIA.

 

February 15, 2002
Rumsfeld directs his staff to develop a white paper on detainees and the Geneva Conventions.

 

March 11, 2002
Rumsfeld suggests further classification review of the already pre-reviewed Annual Report to the President and the Congress.

 

March 11, 2002
Rumsfeld says the DOD annual report is not conclusive or upbeat enough.

 

March 12, 2002
Rumsfeld recounts his conversation with Russian MoD Sergei Ivanov at a Washington Wizards basketball game.

 

March 14, 2002
Rumsfeld asks how to fix the requirements process.

 

March 16, 2002
Rumsfeld inquiries into U.S. nuclear policy.

 

March 26, 2002
Under the subject “Business As Usual”, Rumsfeld questions whether the Department should cut educational programs while at war.

 

March 28, 2002
Rumsfeld pushes to lift restrictions on contractors providing force protection.

 

March 28, 2002
Rumsfeld proposes a weekly meeting on Afghanistan, stating that it is “drifting”.

April 3, 2002
Rumsfeld’s thoughts on the Middle East.

 

April 8, 2002
Rumsfeld instructs his staff to create a list of all the major “processes” at the Pentagon and shorten them by atleast 20 percent.

 

April 9, 2002
Rumsfeld expresses concern about a “zero defect mentality” in promotion process.

 

 

April 12, 2002
Rumsfeld ruminates on the creation of a new Homeland Security Department.

 

April 15, 2002
Rumsfeld details a conversation with Henry Kissinger about the ICC.

 

April 15, 2002
Rumsfeld contacts Tenet about the ICC.

 

April 23, 2002
Rumsfeld considers possibly renegotiating a Russia-NATO arrangement.

 

April 23, 2002
Rumsfeld proposes using contractors to train the Afghan army.

 

April 23, 2002
Rumsfeld asks if a DOD chart of the PPB system is a joke, or whether it should be.

 

May 5, 2002
Rumsfeld tells Hank Crumpton to “speak up”.

 

May 22, 2002
Rumsfeld circulates a letter comparing interrogation techniques in Afghanistan to Guantanamo.

 

August 8, 2002
Rumsfeld questions whether it is right for pilots to use amphetamines.

 

August 17, 2002
Rumsfeld ruminates on the U.S. and Western Europe “stopping proliferation, reducing weapons of mass destruction and contrubitng to peace and stability” around the world.

 

August 19, 2002
Rumsfeld addresses the President, Vice President, CIA Director, and National Security Advisor on U.S. policy towards Iran and North Korea.

 

October 1, 2002
Rumsfeld sends handwritten notes from an interview with a detainee to Fieth.

 

March 3, 2003
Rumsfeld requests a contingency plan for the possibility of capturing an imposter of Saddam Hussein.

 

March 3, 2003
Rumsfeld contacts Tenet about the intelligence that led to capturing KSM.

 

March 26, 2003
Rumsfeld requests material to brief the President privately on a post-Saddam Iraq.

 

Suspension of the 1st Amendment

‘petition the government for a redress of grievances’….remember that part of the First Amendment? 45 words of freedom…no more.

Diogenes' Middle Finger: NYT Graciously Admits the 1st ...

So, from the Department of Homeland Security under the Biden administration… Notice it expires in 3 months….hummm

Summary

 

The Acting Secretary of Homeland Security has issued a National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin due to a heightened threat environment across the United States, which DHS believes will persist in the weeks following the successful Presidential Inauguration.  Information suggests that some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence.

 

Duration

Issued:  January 27, 2021 11:00 am
Expires:  April 30, 2021 01:00 pm

Details

  • Throughout 2020, Domestic Violent Extremists (DVEs) targeted individuals with opposing views engaged in First Amendment-protected, non-violent protest activity.  DVEs motivated by a range of issues, including anger over COVID-19 restrictions, the 2020 election results, and police use of force have plotted and on occasion carried out attacks against government facilities.
  • Long-standing racial and ethnic tension—including opposition to immigration—has driven DVE attacks, including a 2019 shooting in El Paso, Texas that killed 23 people.
  • DHS is concerned these same drivers to violence will remain through early 2021 and some DVEs may be emboldened by the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. to target elected officials and government facilities.
  • DHS remains concerned that Homegrown Violent Extremists (HVEs) inspired by foreign terrorist groups, who committed three attacks targeting government officials in 2020, remain a threat.
  • Threats of violence against critical infrastructure, including the electric, telecommunications and healthcare sectors, increased in 2020 with violent extremists citing misinformation and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 for their actions.
  • DHS, as well as other Federal agencies and law enforcement partners will continue to take precautions to protect people and infrastructure across the United States.
  • DHS remains committed to preventing violence and threats meant to intimidate or coerce specific populations on the basis of their religion, race, ethnicity, identity or political views.
  • DHS encourages state, local, tribal, and territorial homeland security partners to continue prioritizing physical security measures, particularly around government facilities, to protect people and critical infrastructure.

The Biden inaugural address included much of this language and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez may be nuts but she is telling us what is really going on….this is a full blown assault on white, conservative citizens across the country…70,80, 90, 100 million people perhaps?

Do you really know the reason the National Guard is still in Washington DC? It is not so much about securing the Capitol or guarding against further protests, it is a message to the nation that you are simply no longer trusted in any form.

Further, this site wrote about pending legislation in Congress that should terrify you beyond words. As a reminder:

There have been countless hearings on The Hill in various committees where Democrats assert the deadly threats of white nationalism and systemic racism. At no time is there tangible evidence except talking points concocted by progressive think tanks and isolated cases investigated by the FBI.

There is also the ever constant issue getting very little attention and that is ‘critical race theory’. Emerging from Harvard University in the 1980’s, critical race theory came from Derrick Bell, a tenured African-American professor.

In part from the Federalist:

As such, federal employees and those who work for corporations that do business with the federal government sucked into the poisonous vortex of critical race theory can thank President Trump for ordering a stop to the promulgation of critical race theory. Thanks should also be sent to scholar Christopher Rufo, whose diligence brought the critical race theory venom to the forefront of Trump’s attention, and Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, who is working to root out members of the administrative state who defy that order.

It’s important to remember that because very few of its activists have shown much sincere desire to end racism, critical race theory should not be taken entirely at face value. If a majority of its supporters were sincere, they would be willing to have fruitful discussions in a civil society that supports civil discourse. Rather, critical race theory’s agitators are committed to tearing down civil society on the pretense that it is an incubator for “systemic racism.”

If you’ve any doubt about that, consider the Smithsonian display on “whiteness” that condemned all elements of civil society, including politeness, hard work, self-reliance, logic, planning, and family cohesion. None of those are “white” values, but critical race theory frames them just so. This sort of animus proves that critical race theory “arguments” are non-starters and merely serve as convenient pretexts for power grabs.

Doused with critical race theory, the Black Lives Matter organization and its related Antifa-infused mobs are organized for the same purposes as all cult recruits: to recruit more people and to implement the desire to divide and conquer. The phenomenon can be seen as they surround people in vehicles or restaurants, demanding their victims raise a fist and recite slogans under the intense intimidation and implications of violence.

Where do you go to redress grievances? Nowhere…just behave accordingly to the Democrats…

 

Biden Admin Anti-Israel, Pro Iran

First question is where is Trita Parsi, Ben Rhodes and Ploughshares….

Those answers may be related to –>

The Department of Justice charged a political scientist and frequent contributor to left-leaning foreign policy publications and mainstream newspapers with acting as an unregistered agent for Iran, according to an announcement from federal prosecutors.

Using the guise of a free-thinking academic, Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi has since 2007 been pushing regime propaganda in publications including the New York Times, Boston GlobeWashington Post, and the Nation magazine, as well as many academic journals. Afrasiabi was formally charged on Tuesday with “acting and conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” according to an indictment unsealed in a Brooklyn federal court. More details here.

So, Breitbart has published an item that details several clues that the Biden administration will be more pro Iran and anti Israel and suggests much of that is already underway. It appears that Breitbart is accurate in this assessment when one also includes the fact that John Kerry is on the Biden team and Biden has chosen Wendy Sherman to be the #2 at the State Department. Sherman was John Kerry’s right hand person during the entire Iran nuclear deal. In fact Biden’s selections for key positions at the State Department are almost all Obama re-treads.

The Deal is for Real - Defense One

Gotta wonder if any of the White House press corps will even bother to ask some hard questions of Jen Psaki…

The Lincoln Project is Not Our Ally. | by Lauren ... source

Meanwhile, we know how disgusting and nefarious the members of The Lincoln Project are….but fair warning as it appears they are the newest version of Fusion GPS…opposition research. How is that related to Iran?

The experienced political grifters who founded the Lincoln Project aren’t going to let Donald Trump’s imminent departure or the end of the 2020 U.S. election cycle impede their cash flow.

Four founding members of the controversial super PAC, which recently parted ways with cofounder John Weaver after dozens of young men accused him of sexually inappropriate behavior, are taking their talents to Israel in an effort to make money by advising one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents in the Jewish state’s upcoming elections.

The Associated Press confirmed that Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, Stuart Stevens, and Reed Galen were recently hired to advise Gideon Sa’ar, a Netanyahu rival who left the Likud Party in 2019 after an unsuccessful campaign for party leadership. Sa’ar, who founded the New Hope party in December 2020, has accused Netanyahu of being too conciliatory to Palestinian interests.

Israel’s legislative elections will take place on March 23.

***

Prime Minister Netanyahu has taken a very hard stance against the nuclear deal and his opposition has been more soft on the approach. There is another fact that barely made any headlines stating that Iran is the new defacto headquarters for al Qaeda. Remember them?

Analysis: 2 wanted al Qaeda leaders operate in Iran | FDD ... source

For 37 years, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Tehran sponsors Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria and other countries, Shia militias in Iraq, Houthi rebels in Yemen, and Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza.

In 1998, an indictment issued by a U.S. district court stated that al Qaeda had “forged alliances” with the “government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States.”

In 2011, a federal judge in New York ruled that the Tehran regime had provided support for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

From 2011 to 2016, the Obama administration repeated in formal terrorist designations and other official statements that the Iranian regime had a “secret deal” with al Qaeda that allows the group to “to funnel funds and operatives through” Iranian territory.

Under President Obama, the Treasury and State Departments described this network inside Iran as al Qaeda’s “core facilitation pipeline,” identified its leader as Yasin al-Suri, who had been allowed by “Iranian authorities” to operate inside Iran since 2005. This month, the State Department revealed that he is still working inside Iran.

Another document seized during that raid, but not released until 2017, states that al Qaeda operatives in Iran were given “everything they needed,” including “money, arms” and “training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in exchange for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.”

Then, two months ago, it was revealed that Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, al Qaeda’s second-in-command, a planner of the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, had been living comfortably in Tehran, permitted to maintain a false identity as a Lebanese history professor. He was about to go somewhere in his car when assassins — presumably dispatched by Israel — ended his career.

Which raised a question: To what extent are Iran’s rulers currently enabling al Qaeda? Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo provided an answer.

For the past five years, he told reporters at the National Press Club, Iran’s rulers “have provided safe haven and logistical support — things like travel documents, ID cards, passports — that enable al Qaeda activity.”

AQ leaders in Iran also are allowed to “to fundraise, to freely communicate with al-Qaeda members around the world, and to perform many other functions that were previously directed from Afghanistan or Pakistan.”

He added: “As a result of this assistance, al Qaeda has centralized its leadership inside of Tehran.”

He named and announced sanctions on two such AQ leaders, and designated three members of an al Qaeda-linked group that, he said, operates on the border between Iran and Iraq.

Most media covered Mr. Pompeo’s remarks dismissively. The Associated Press told readers that “many in the intelligence community” found Mr. Pompeo’s charges regarding the Tehran-AQ link “overblown given a history of animosity between the two.”

The New York Times accused Mr. Pompeo of “demonizing Iran,” in order to make “any effort by Mr. Biden to resuscitate the Iran nuclear deal more difficult.”

And, of course, those who sympathize with Iran’s rulers were outraged. Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), asserted that Mr. Pompeo has “leaked materials to the advocacy group Foundation for Defense of Democracies aimed at supporting the claim of Iran and al Qaeda ties.”

That’s false. Beginning in 2011, colleagues at FDD worked hard to persuade the U.S. government to declassify and release primary source documents retrieved from Osama bin Laden’s villa in Pakistan. Mr. Pompeo, as CIA director, did that in 2017.

These documents are key for understanding how al Qaeda operates — in Iran and many other countries. But, as noted, the fact that AQ had an “agreement” with the Iranian regime had been revealed by the Obama administration years earlier. Why NIAC would not want additional information released I leave for you to consider.

The Obama administration ended up transferring billions of dollars to Iran’s rulers in exchange for their promise to slow-walk their nuclear program. The money was used to develop missiles that can carry nuclear warheads, establish military bases in Syria, arm Houthi rebels, attack Saudi oil facilities, and similar purposes.

And while Iran’s rulers remained in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) along with our European allies, they have repeatedly violated their obligations, for example announcing this past weekend that they were preparing to produce uranium metal, which they had agreed not to do for 15 years.

France, Germany and Britain urged the theocrats to “return to compliance with their JCPOA commitments without further delay.” A prediction: Iran’s rulers will promise to do that if the price is right. But they won’t keep their promise. Because they are not with us. They are with the terrorists — including those who attacked us on 9/11. source and hat tip

 

Progressive’s Comprehensive Manipulation of Human Behavior

This is a rather long article but for your benefit and that of our nation.

For decades, slicing away at human rights and the protections of the Bill of Rights have been not only been happening but in recent years it has moved into a faster forward gear. The right to self protection is often bundled in the 2nd Amendment but consider self protection is also protected in the 1st Amendment and that means protecting ourselves with speech, rallies and peaceful protests.

Big media and big tech are grouping people that are for law and order, that are conservatives and are loyal Trump supporters because of his doctrine are under assault which is beyond dispute. Big media and big tech are on overt missions to terminate Fox News, NewsMax, OANN and even social media platforms such as Parler. Just turn on CNN and MSNBC for an hour if you can stand it and the proof is there.

All for the greater good….yeah sure….

Understand that the template for a national lock-down during the beginning of the pandemic, we behaved. We stayed home, we detached ourselves from society, we could not go to church, we could not go to doctor appointments, we could not go to the gym to maintain physical fitness. Dr. Fauci was the expert and we were told to trust the science of the virus. That science changed countless times. Since then, many mayors and governors have mandated closures and sequestration applying slippery facts and slanted science.

Empty street is seen on Times Square | in-cyprus.com an empty Time Square

We continue to suffer from fear across the nation for various reasons that altering our behavior and thought. We don’t want to be cancelled, but we are getting cancelled nonetheless. We are in a tidal wave of censorship meant to silence foes and settle old scores.

Thought, conversation and dissent is a human right, a civil right. Free movement is as well, a long look back at unalienable rights is your duty. This report from the U.S. State Department summarizes it well.

It goes beyond MSNBC.

On Wednesday night, a member of the Democratic National Committee ranted that everyone who voted for President Trump should be “deprogrammed.”

David Atkins, who wrote in his campaign for the DNC, “I currently serve as the Region 10 Director for the California Democratic Party,” tweeted on Wednesday a message reminiscent of the repressive Communist states around the world: “No seriously…how *do* you deprogram 75 million people? Where do you start? Fox? Facebook? We have to start thinking in terms of post-WWII Germany or Japan. Or the failures of Reconstruction in the South.” Read more here from the DailyWire.

But there is yet another nefarious global policy that is taking hold and you must beware. It is called The Great Reset. It is applying the same template that was used in 2020-21. Your behavior has already been altered, so it stands to reason the global elites and the Biden administration will push that action on all of America.

Now is the time for a 'great reset' of capitalism | World ...

Biden’s Build back better is a World Economic Forum plan to “reinvent capitalism” so that companies are more focused on the greater good, not profits, according to the WEF‘s own statements. How to accomplish that? By the “great reset.” Again, that’s according to the WEF‘s own words. source

Here is a summary for your use by Stacey Rubin, a lawyer and former litigator: (I interviewed her on my radio show)

At any anti-lockdown protest, you will see signs that say “Stop the Great Reset.” The New York Times calls this phrase “a baseless conspiracy theory.” Here is the problem. None of this is secret. There are books you can read about it and detailed websites describing it. Time Magazine even did a cover story. It’s the title of World Economic Forum head Klaus Schwab’s book on the lockdowns and the future. It was published July 9, 2020, and now has nearly 900 reviews on Amazon.

Proponents of “The Great Reset” argue that the pandemic proves our former society “doesn’t work,” so we need a tech-focused, “sustainable” future to reduce emissions and thereby “save the planet.” The Great Reset is a rebranded, tightened-up version of the UN’s decades-old “Sustainable Development” agenda (“Agenda 21”). The same policies and ideas are contained in “The Green New Deal,” which was defeated in 2019 in the US Congress.

It bears repeating: six months before “SARS-CoV-2” was discovered by China, the UN and the WEF signed a “Strategic Partnership” specifically to advance the “Sustainable Development” agenda, now known as “The Great Reset.” You can read all about this partnership online.

Schwab has been openly “fighting” (to use his own word) against Milton Friedman-style economics for decades, ever since Friedman published his famous 1970 essay: “The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” Schwab now predicts that the “COVID19 pandemic” — which he says will last at least until 2022 — will mark the final death-knell of “neo-liberalism,” which he defines as “a corpus of ideas and policies . . . favoring competition over solidarity, creative destruction over government intervention and economic growth over social welfare.”

Others would describe neoliberalism as “decentralized power and smaller government,” and Schwab’s preferred system as “China under Xi Jinping.”

How long has Schwab known that a pandemic could be used to advance his ideals? A while, if his publications and planning exercises are any indication. His book, COVID-19: The Great Reset contains lengthy discourse on how pandemics are known agents for major societal shifts. He asks, “Why should COVID-19 be any different?”

Then there is the fact that Schwab’s organization practiced a “high-level pandemic exercise” in October 2019, less than five months before “Covid-19″ came along. The WEF’s co-sponsors for this event were The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, both of which have actively promoted 2020’s unprecedented pandemic response —as Imperial College London’s Neil Ferguson recently explained, lockdowns were not recommended by any government until Xi Jinping “changed what was possible” by proclaiming “this worked for us in China.”

This extraordinarily fortuitously-timed pandemic planning exercise makes Schwab look like something of an oracle. Indeed, he openly brags about his foresight:

“For years, international organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO), institutions like the World Economic Forum and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI — launched at the Annual Meeting 2017 in Davos), and individuals like Bill Gates have been warning us about the next pandemic risk, even specifying that it: 1) would emerge in a highly populated place where economic development forces people and wildlife together; 2) would spread quickly and silently by exploiting networks of human travel and trade; and 3) would reach multiple countries by thwarting containment.”

In 2017, Anthony Fauci made a similar prediction, declaring that “there is no doubt” that Donald J. Trump “will be confronted with a pandemic” before the end of his term. Like Schwab, Fauci actively promotes lockdowns. Like Schwab, he declares that we can never again return to normal — if we do, we should expect diseases to constantly jump from animals to humans (because pandemics never happened until 2020, when the world grew “too industrialized”). To save ourselves, we must redesign society “in harmony with nature.”

Both Fauci and Schwab’s prose are littered with terms like “sustainability,” “inclusiveness,” “green,” “nature,” and “harmony.” Terms that are hard to disagree with, although the behaviors supposedly promoting them are a harder sell. Schwab reveals in his “Great Reset” book that our new germ-avoidant behaviors are seen as optimal to “the environment:”

During lockdowns, many consumers previously reluctant to rely too heavily on digital applications and services were forced to change their habits almost overnight . . . many of the tech behaviors that we were forced to adopt during confinement will through familiarity become more natural. If health [read: fear of germs] considerations become paramount, we may decide, for example, that a cycling class in front of a screen at home . . . is safer (and cheaper!).

The same reasoning applies to many different domains like flying to a meeting (Zoom is safer, cheaper, greener and much more convenient), driving to a distant family gathering for the weekend (the WhatsApp family group is not as fun but, again, safer, cheaper and greener) or even attending an academic course (not as fulfilling, but cheaper and more convenient).

Spelling this out for those too stunned to take it in: this is an open admission that it benefits Schwab and Fauci’s political agenda to continue lockdowns as long as possible. The same people who sell interminable lockdowns — by ignoring great science on pre-existing immunity, lack of asymptomatic spread, and flawed PCR tests — believe the lockdowns are the perfect agent to usher in the changes they desire. Will they succeed? Is their behavior remotely justified? Does the pandemic really prove our society is fatally flawed? Why can’t they use the political system to gain majority votes if their agenda is so good?

Covid-19 is the first major pandemic in six decades. Worse pandemics occurred in 1918, 1957, and 1968, when the population was exponentially smaller (1.8 billion; 2.8 billion; and 3.6 billion, respectively) and carbon emissions were not even on anyone’s radar. Because pandemics have always occurred, there is no logical basis — not even a flimsy one — to infer that “population growth,” “climate change” or “industrialization” caused this one.

People may or may not agree with Schwab that Zoom meetings are preferable to in-person work, that sitting in the same house every day of the week is preferable to commuting to an office, that local entertainment is better than international travel, that exercise classes are just as good over the computer screen as they are in a studio. But there is one thing most people agree with: being told that “germs” threaten your existence when they really do not is abusive.

Scaring people into their homes, making them fear their own family and friends, preying on their vulnerabilities, shattering their social existences— especially when you knowingly do this in hopes of making it permanent — is just about as bad as human behavior gets.

Just as bad, Schwab et al. know the lockdowns are “taking out” certain industries while sparing others: in a nutshell, the powerful survive. Anyone who has both this knowledge and the ability to influence lockdown duration has an unthinkable level of power and an unlimited ability to amass more of it by manipulating pretty much the entire global financial system. All of this is eminently predictable by the people encouraging, supporting, and imposing the restrictive orders.

“The [restaurant] sector of activity has been hit by the pandemic [lockdown] to such a dramatic extent that it . . . may never come back. In France and the U.K., several industry voices estimate that up to 75% of independent restaurants might not survive the lockdowns and subsequent social distancing measures. The large chains and fast-food giants will. This in turn suggests that big business will get bigger while the smallest shrink or disappear. A large restaurant chain, for example, has a better chance of staying operational as it benefits from more resources and, ultimately, less competition in the wake of bankruptcies among smaller outfits.”

Knowingly taking out small businesses — one of the last bastions of free speech and independence, distinguishable from the tightly-controlled corporate world — is evil. It is hard to believe anyone would do it, if they could avoid it. However, it is equally hard to ignore the fact that Florida, Georgia, South Dakota, Texas and Sweden (among many others) have fully open economies and average mortality to show for it.

Both public health ethics and the Siracusa Principles dictate that the “least restrictive means” must be used when “public health” is given as a justification for restricting basic human rights, such as the right to earn a living. Yet Schwab and Fauci both ignore Sweden and Florida, and claim that Covid-19 lockdown restrictions must continue until 2022 (or longer). How on earth do they justify it?

They seem to be telling themselves — and may even truly believe — that they are “saving the planet,” so the ends justify the means. In his book, Schwab poses the rhetorical question, “Is it okay to lie to the public for some greater good?” “Well,” I would respond, “who should we trust to decide what is the greater good?” There will never be unified agreement on which system achieves this end. Some will vote Milton Friedman, some Klaus Schwab. Most everyone, however, would agree that tricks like exploiting pandemics should not be used, even by “one’s own” side.

Reasonable people may well believe in the merit of Schwab’s “stakeholder economy.” But they undoubtedly expect to be persuaded of its merit, not to have the system foisted on them by ruse. The democratic process exists so ideas can be openly hashed out, debated, and settled by the public, each person allotted one vote. Schwab quite openly admits that he would like to dispense with this process — it is not producing the result he desires. Far from it: recent populist movements in the US (“Make America Great Again”) and UK (“Brexit”) have specifically rejected his collectivist ideals:

“Without greater collaboration, we will be unable to address the global challenges that we collectively face. Put in the simplest possible terms: if, as human beings, we do not collaborate to confront our existential challenges (the environment and the global governance free fall, among others), we are doomed.”

In his “Great Reset” marketing book, Schwab threatens that this rising tide of nationalism will prove “incompatible” with the United States dollar’s “status as global reserve currency.” He suggests that an alternative currency will be needed, that a global digital currency is eventually going to arrive, and that China is “years ahead of the rest of the world” in developing one.

Although he doesn’t say so directly, Schwab et al. undoubtedly dislike what Trump has been doing to defend the dollar. Schwab quotes Barry Eichengreen and European Central Bank representatives as follows: “The security premium enjoyed by the U.S. dollar could diminish” because “the U.S. is disengaging from global geopolitics in favor of more stand-alone, inward-looking policies.”

Predictably, Schwab makes the argument that these same nationalist policies proved disastrous during “the pandemic.” Echoing the WHO’s praise of China’s collectivist action in Wuhan — which Xi Jinping proudly declares “eradicated the virus” from the entire nation of China — Schwab writes that countries fared better during the pandemic when they share “a real sense of solidarity, favoring the common good over individual aspirations and needs.”

“Favorable societal characteristics [include] core values of inclusivity, solidarity and trust [which] are strong determining elements and important contributors to success in containing an epidemic.”

Support for these concepts is not a new feeling for Schwab. This did not spring organically out of the pandemic for him, like an epiphany. Rather, this is his long-held vision of utopia and his life’s work. He’s been talking about it for decades:

Earlier this year, Schwab told the Financial Times that his aim has been to beat back Friedman. “What was for me always disturbing was that Milton Friedman gave a moral reasoning to shareholder capitalism — [he argued] the role of business was to make business earn as much as possible and then the money would flow back from the company to the government in the form of taxes. I had to fight against the wave.”

In short, Schwab et al. are on a mission. The mission is to change society. They admire China’s and New Zealand’s governance. They practiced for a pandemic. Science has been thrown to the wind for months, censorship is rampant, Sweden and Florida are ignored, the rule of law is suspended, and certain governors seem determined never to release us from their declared “state of emergency.”

These circumstances are favorable to Schwab and his powerful allies, including technology companies, billionaires, the media, China, the UN, and others. They are detrimental to billions of less powerful, less organized people and small businesses. There is a lot we don’t know, because we aren’t being told.

Schwab and his ideologically-aligned allies think they are saving the world. It is not conspiracy theory to read their own books and listen to their own words, which target fundamental liberties and rights that the West has long taken for granted. At some point, it’s not unreasonable to observe that this is no longer about public health. It’s about a new political vision, one hatched by a private few in order to rule over the many. It is unlikely to be shared by most people, thus setting up what is likely to be an epic battle in 2021.