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Free Speech Is For Fighting The Empire: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Posted by M. C. on February 24, 2023

It sure is interesting how Russia is the only nation in the world that’s pushing Sweden to release its findings in its investigation into the Nord Stream bombing, while an American UN official is urging “restraint” about investigations into the incident.

Caitlin Johnstone

https://open.substack.com/pub/caitlinjohnstone/p/free-speech-is-for-fighting-the-empire?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

My research has led me to conclude that there’s an elite conspiracy to enslave us all and turn us all into brainwashed automatons mindlessly enacting the wishes of our rulers in a cruel dystopia built by the powerful, for the powerful.

Haha, just kidding. That already happened.

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Step one is learning that the mainstream consensus worldview is a lie, and that we’ve been fed power-serving propaganda since we were children about our society, our nation, our government and our world. Most people haven’t even made it to step one yet.

Step two is getting clear on how we’ve been lied to. A lot of people who make it past step one get mixed up here. Many fall for dopey right-wing narratives about Jews ruling the world, globalist pedophile cabals, elite conspiracies to make all our kids transgendered or whatever, because their ideology prohibits them from clearly seeing the real underlying dynamics of capitalism and the empire-building of their own government. They place far too much emphasis on things like vaccines and the future of transhumanism being used to someday create an Orwellian dystopia, because their worldview prohibits them from recognizing that we’re already living in a power-serving mind-controlled dystopia.

Others simply don’t go far enough in extracting the mainstream worldview from their minds and don’t inquire deeply enough into what’s really true. Plenty of self-identified socialists and anarchists still buy into bogus mainstream narratives about empire-targeted governments, or still buy into to the power-serving dynamics of party politics. Step two takes a lot of hard, sincere, intellectually honest work sorting out fact from fiction.

Step three is learning what to do about all this, and beginning to take action. This means working to spread awareness of what’s really going on and helping others to make it through steps one and two, because the only thing that ever leads to lasting positive changes in human behavior is an expansion of consciousness. The more people make it to step three, the more people there are to help wake up everyone else.

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Without the US military who would protect the world from hobby balloons and natural gas pipelines?

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It sure is interesting how Russia is the only nation in the world that’s pushing Sweden to release its findings in its investigation into the Nord Stream bombing, while an American UN official is urging “restraint” about investigations into the incident.

Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz

I wonder why Russia is the only nation urging Sweden to release its findings in its investigation into the Nord Stream bombing while the American UN official urges “restraint” on investigations into the incident?

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11:36 PM ∙ Feb 21, 20234,920Likes1,473Retweets

The US empire’s responsibility for the Nord Stream bombing is going to become one of those open secrets that everyone knows but nobody officially confirms, like Israel’s nuclear arsenal (which just as an aside Sy Hersh also helped expose).

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Free speech is meaningless and worthless if you don’t use it to oppose real power. In western “democracies” the majority of people are so effectively propagandized into speaking in alignment with the interests of the western empire that they may as well be taking orders on what to say at gunpoint.

In totalitarian regimes you say what your rulers want you to say because they physically coerced you using the threat of violence. In “free democracies” you say what your rulers want you to say because they psychologically coerced you using propaganda. The end result is the same.

Reagan once joked about Soviets thinking they are free because they’re allowed to criticize the US government as much as they like, but really that was just projection. Westerners think they have free speech, but they never use that “free speech” to criticize the tyrannical empire they live under.

Free speech is held as an important human right because it helps the people put a check on power. If you’re not using it for that, you may as well not have it. Your speech is only free insofar as you can criticize real power, and insofar as you actually do so.

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The reason I often use the phrase “the political/media class” is because it’s all one class, one social caste. They’re not actually separate in any meaningful way.

MSNBC Public Relations @MSNBCPR

JUST ANNOUNCED: @jrpsaki will debut “Inside with Jen Psaki” on Sunday, March 19 at 12 p.m. ET on @MSNBC. Psaki will also contribute a regular column for @MSNBCDaily and develop a new original streaming show set to launch this spring. MORE: bit.ly/3kbql1r

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3:19 PM ∙ Feb 21, 2023

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Whenever I talk about the hundreds of military bases the US empire is circling our planet with I always get people saying “We only have all those foreign bases because those foreign governments want us there for protection!”

Yes, yes I’m sure it’s got nothing to do with the fact that the US subverts, impoverishes and destroys any weaker nation that refuses to facilitate its military interests. 

Foreign US military bases are “protection” in the same way extortion payments to the Mafia are “protection”.

Foreign governments don’t allow US military bases on their territory to protect themselves from their neighbors, they do it to protect themselves from the US.

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One of the strangest things the mainstream worldview asks us to accept is that the US government (A) should be the leader of the entire world and (B) wants to be the leader of the world solely for righteous and beneficent reasons.

Anyone else who wants to rule the world gets called a megalomaniac. We all grew up watching movies and shows about evil villains who want to rule the world. Yet the mainstream worldview asks us to accept that the US government wants to rule the world because they want to promote freedom and democracy.

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It’s easy to see the flaws in other countries, cultures and societies. It’s much harder to see the flaws in our own.

It’s easy to see the problems with other political parties and ideological factions. It’s much harder to see the problems with our own.

It’s easy to see how other groups are propagandized. It’s much harder to see how our own group is propagandized.

It’s easy to see how others are misguided and delusional. It’s much harder to see how we ourselves are misguided and delusional.

The further away from ourselves we look, the easier it is for us to find fault. But it doesn’t benefit anyone for us to find problems in the distant other. The closer to home we look, the more good we can do with what we find.

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Credit Card Late Fees

Posted by M. C. on February 23, 2023

What about that present upper bound of $41? Was that given down to mankind on tablets of stone? No. That, too, originated from our friendly central planners in the booty-seeking capital of the country. How would this fee be determined under the free enterprise system? Simple:

Luis Rivera

By Walter E. Block

https://open.substack.com/pub/walterblock/p/credit-card-late-fees?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, no bureaucrats they, rather public-spirited civil servants, are proposing a new regulation: credit card late fees, which can now reach a maximum of $41, will be capped at a mere $8.

One would think, based on this new initiative, that the reason we have late fees for credit card non or late payments in the first place is out of sheer meanness and profiteering. That would appear to be the level of understanding enjoyed by the promulgators of this new directive.

If you thought that, you’d be right. According to Rohit Chopra, CFPB director, excessive fees such as $41, serve “no purpose beyond padding the credit card companies’ profits.” And in the view of Aaron Klein, senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution: “The rule brings to the forefront the reality that credit card late fees are designed to be excessive to create incentives for consumer behavior. They are not in proportion to the cost to the lender…”

Let’s hold on for a second. Suppose, to take the extreme case (often, it is easier to see economics in action when you do so: it is easier to see the mountain rather than the molehill) the new dictat mandated no late fees at all. What would be the effect of that? Obviously, poor people and those without good credit ratings at all, would be charged very high rates of interest for the borrowing that they do, in effect, between the time of their purchases and when their credit card payments are due. But suppose, further, that our masters in Washington DC precluded that option (they would call it usury, ignoring the fact that the high rates of interest would emanate from their foreclosure of late fees in our hypothetical example). What, then, would be the result? Why, those who are presumed by the CFPB to be the beneficiaries of their largesse, the poor and those with bad credit ratings, would not be able to enjoy the benefits of credit cards at all (unless of course, the government granted these to them in an entirely new and very costly program).

Now that we have seen the effects of no penalties at all, it is easy to discern the results of reducing the upper limit from $41 to $8: moves in this malevolent direction. The impecunious will not be entirely bereft of credit cards, although some will. Most such people will either be charged higher rates of interest and/or find it more difficult to initially obtain and then retain their cards, and almost certainly be subject to lower limits on how much they may spend initially.

What about that present upper bound of $41? Was that given down to mankind on tablets of stone? No. That, too, originated from our friendly central planners in the booty-seeking capital of the country. How would this fee be determined under the free enterprise system? Simple: different credit card companies would charge different combinations of interest charges and late fees to their clients. The competitive process would tend to ensure that the amalgamation that came closest to maximizing consumer welfare would be approached. Too high, and the company would lose customers. Too low, and they would court bankruptcy.

Originally published here.

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Senator Accuses FAA Of Ignoring Potential Vaccine Dangers To Pilots

Posted by M. C. on February 23, 2023

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/senator-accuses-faa-ignoring-potential-vaccine-dangers-pilots

Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, during a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee on Feb. 9, 2021. (Ting Shen/AFP via Getty Images)

Not the FAA’s Role

In his Jan. 27 letter to the FAA, Johnson provided specific information about five named pilots with suspected COVID-19 vaccine ill effects; one of the pilots died 17 days after being vaccinated.

Numerous other accounts of pilots with suspected vaccine injuries are included in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, as The Epoch Times reported previously.

Johnson wanted to know what steps the FAA has taken or planned to take to investigate whether the five named pilots and others had suffered adverse effects after COVID-19 shots.

Northrup wrote that her agency isn’t in charge of that.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the responsible agency for tracking and follow up of suspected vaccine adverse events,” she wrote.

Northrup noted that pilots experiencing any medical issues are required to “ground themselves,” seek medical help and report any “significant medical events.”

“FAA is responsible for determining whether that event will have an adverse safety effect,” Northrup wrote.

She also said the agency was “aware of only four potentially vaccine-related adverse events in active pilots.”

Among those four, “only one has provided medical documentation through the normal process,” Northrup wrote. She gave no further information on what that process involves.

Justification For Shots

Johnson noted that, on Dec. 12, 2020, the day after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized COVID-19 vaccines for “emergency use” among the general public, the FAA declared pilots were permitted to take the shots, too.

That action surprised many in aviation because pilots are forbidden from taking other emergency-use-authorized drugs.

To justify the drugs’ use in pilots, Northrup listed nine websites about the general safety of the various brands of vaccines. Aviation experts have questioned whether any studies were done on pilots specifically. There were no such studies immediately apparent among the list Northrup provided.

Asked whether the FAA evaluated whether any changes should be made to guidance on COVID-19 vaccines for pilots, Northrup responded that the agency has “continued to monitor the data and determined no change in policy was indicated.”

Read more here…

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Government’s Proper Role Is To Protect Freedom, Not Force Ideology

Posted by M. C. on February 23, 2023

https://rumble.com/v2aibk4-governments-proper-role-is-to-protect-freedom-not-force-ideology.html

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Washington Post Lets Hersh’s Dangerous Cat Out of the Bag – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on February 23, 2023

https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2023/02/22/washington-post-lets-hershs-dangerous-cat-out-of-the-bag/

by Ray McGovern

Bombshell No. 1: Seymour Hersh’s Feb. 8 report that President Joe Biden authorized the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines built to carry cheap Russian gas to Europe.

Bombshell No. 2: The Washington Post today ended the Establishment media embargo on Hersh’s damning report, mentioning its findings and even including a link to his article.

The Post’s article by Karen DeYoung, no rogue reporter, bore the headline, “Russia, blaming US sabotage, calls for UN probe of Nord Stream.” DeYoung reported on the UN Security Council meeting yesterday at which Russia called for a special United Nations commission to investigate the explosions that blew up the Nord Stream undersea pipelines. DeYoung also noted that Professor Jeffrey Sachs and I gave short briefings at the beginning of the Security Council session.

Here’s an edited summary account by the UN of our testimony at the Security Council session:

SACHS: As the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines on 26 September 2022 constitutes an act of international terrorism and represents a threat to peace, it is the Council’s responsibility to take up the question of who might have carried out the act, help bring the perpetrator to justice, pursue compensation for the damaged parties and prevent such actions from recurring in the future. Countries need full confidence that their infrastructure will not be destroyed by third parties.

The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines required a very high degree of planning, expertise and technological capacity, he continued, adding that only a handful of State-level actors have both the technical capacity and access to the Baltic Sea to have carried out this action. These include the Russian Federation, the United States, the United Kingdom, Poland, Norway, Germany, Denmark and Sweden, either individually or in some combination.

Sweden has perhaps the most to tell the world about the crime scene; that country has kept the results of its investigation secret from the rest of the world. It has refused to share its findings with the Russian Federation and turned down a joint investigation with Denmark and Germany.

Pointing to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s detailed account of the Nord Stream destruction, he said his work attributes the Nord Stream destruction to a decision ordered by

United States President Joseph R. Biden and carried out by United States agents in a covert operation. The Biden Administration has described Hersh’s account as “completely and utterly false” but did not offer any information contradicting Hersh’s account and/or any alternative explanation.

RAY MCGOVERN: Mr. Hersh attracts whistle-blowers because of his perfect record of protecting their identities and accurately publishing what they reveal, despite Government attacks. While some are now smearing Mr. Hersh, such critics do not themselves have a good record of credibility…

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) more than doubled in size, despite its promises not to. When Crimea was annexed by the Russian Federation, President Vladimir Putin noted that the country had to annex Crimea due to a February 2014 coup, and due to the prospect that medium-range ballistic missiles will be placed in already operational systems in Romania and Poland. Despite being disguised as anti-ballistic missile systems, they can easily accommodate hypersonic missiles.

China Gives Full Support to Russian Resolution

See the rest here

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Narrative Is Used To Override Healthy Human Self-Interest

Posted by M. C. on February 23, 2023

 If humanity survives, it will be because something shifted in us which caused us to lose the sticky, entangled relationship with thought which made it so easy for ill-intentioned manipulators to drag us this way and that by our minds. 

Göring: Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

“But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.”
― Adolf Hitler

Caitlin Johnstone

https://open.substack.com/pub/caitlinjohnstone/p/narrative-is-used-to-override-healthy?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

It’s very odd how humans can be manipulated into acting against their own self-interest to the benefit of their rulers in ways that animals would never tolerate, just by exploiting the fact that we experience thoughts in our heads that animals do not experience.

Take violence, for example. Predator animals survive by attacking and killing other animals for their own benefit, but as soon as a prey animal makes it clear that it’s not worth the effort, the predator will back off in its own self-interest. The predator understands instinctually that attacking a healthy bull elephant isn’t worth the risk to its own physical wellbeing, and even a wildebeest that proves stronger than expected will be backed off from. A broken bone or a nasty wound can mean the death of the predator, and even a prey animal that forces a predator to expend too much energy won’t be deemed worth the effort when there’s slower, weaker prey to be found.

With less advanced organisms that animal self-interest often isn’t there. Ants for example will charge into battle to their certain death against much larger foes who pose a threat to their nest, instinctually valuing the collective wellbeing of the colony above their own lives. Honeybees will sacrifice their own lives to land a good sting on a threat to the hive, their stingers evolved so that they rip out their own guts when they pierce the flesh of their target.

Humans, interestingly, fall somewhere between tiny-brained hive insects and the larger-brained mammals and birds in terms of self-preservation impulses involving violence, despite having the most advanced brains in the animal kingdom. We have the same instinctive aversions to putting ourselves at risk as those other animals, but that instinct can be overridden by putting a bunch of stories in our heads about how the enemy must be destroyed for this or that reason. A few false narratives about God and glory had humans marching off to fight and die in the Crusades like a bunch of mindless insects.

This is because the capacity for abstract thought that our recently evolved brains have given us can be exploited by clever humans with a predisposition toward manipulation. Because we’re often finding our way around in the world by thoughts and language rather than instinct, we can be manipulated into acting far more foolishly than a pigeon or a squirrel or a tiger ever would.

As humans have gotten better at sharing ideas and information with each other our awareness about what’s real and what’s false has expanded, so we don’t see as many manipulations involving God and glory anymore. Now more clever lies are required to get us charging off to war, like the need to spread freedom and democracy and protect our loved ones from terrorism. 

And the same dynamic is used to get us acting against our own interests to the benefit of our rulers throughout every aspect of human civilization, not just with war and violence. Our mental soundtracks are manipulated by propaganda into consenting to extremely abusive systems where people will be deprived of basic human needs if they can’t shape themselves into useful cogs in the machine of industry. Where money can be used for political influence, which can in turn be used to funnel more money to those who have lots of it from those who have very little. Where privacy for the individual is continuously eroded while secrecy for the government is continually thickened. 

Environmental destruction. Economic injustice and inequality. Rentier capitalism. Corruption. Steadily escalating police militarization. Soaring incarceration. Increasing internet censorship. And all while wealth and resources are taken from the people and poured toward global power agendas which do not benefit them, and which in fact impoverish them and endanger them as the empire’s “great power competition” against Russia and China rolls out economic warfare which empties their wallets and threatens their lives with nuclear brinkmanship.

These are all egregious assaults on our wellbeing which would not be tolerated except for our susceptibility to mass-scale psychological manipulation. We are propagandized into accepting a level of personal sacrifice more appropriate for bees and ants than for highly evolved mammals, all because our relationship with thought makes it hard for us to distinguish reality from narrative.

See the rest here

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Doug Casey on the Rise of China… And What it Means for the World

Posted by M. C. on February 23, 2023

I hasten to point out that “Communist” China is not, in fact, communist. And it hasn’t been for 40 years. Its economic system is state corporatism, or fascism, very much on Mussolini’s model. It’s surprisingly similar to our own system, although with much more authoritarian, top-down control.

https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-on-the-rise-of-china-and-what-it-means-for-the-world/

by Doug Casey

International Man: Lee Kuan Yew, the former leader of Singapore, once said:

“The size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance.

It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world.”

What is your take?

Doug Casey: China has united 1.4 billion people into a single political entity, so of course they have a lot of weight. But simply having masses of people under your political control doesn’t mean as much as it used to.

China would still be a poverty-stricken non-entity if it hadn’t been for the reforms that Deng Xiaoping made starting in 1980. Masses of uneducated, desperately poor peasants are more of a liability than an asset in the modern world. Deng transformed China’s economy into something that functions pretty much like those in the West. But now, Xi Jinping seems to be returning to the philosophy of Chairman Mao, with much more centralized control. That’s very negative for the country.

Secondly, China’s demographics are horrible. The average woman today only has 1.4 children. Low reproduction rates are to be expected when a society urbanizes. But China also had a draconian one-child policy starting in 1980 that only ended in 2015. That, and the fact the Chinese prefer males for cultural reasons, compounded the phenomenon.

Few people in the West realize that as a result of these things, the Chinese population is in steep decline. UN projections—which aren’t worth much but are still interesting—find that by the end of this century, their population could collapse to 600 or 700 million. And they’ll mostly be old people, so it’s not going to bounce back quickly.

I have real questions about whether China’s economic miracle of the last 40 years will continue. Perhaps it will even go into reverse. That’s because China’s huge transformation is the result of its adoption of some aspects of Western Civilization, which made the United States and Western Europe different from, and better than, any other countries in world history.

I think there are at least 12 characteristics that are underpinned the West. They are free thought, free speech, free markets, property rights, limited government, individualism, rationality, personal liberty, the concept of progress, privacy, the rule of law, and entrepreneurialism.

Humans everywhere understand their value and adhere to them sporadically, of course; without them civilization is impossible. But only the West made them integral to itself, as principles. They’re what made us unique.

International Man: Since 2013, China has been working on its Belt and Road Initiative, which stretches from East Asia to Europe. It’s primarily a trade network of seaports and railroads controlled by Beijing, reminiscent of the ancient Silk Road. So far, over 100 countries have signed on to the massive trade and infrastructure initiative.

What are its geopolitical and economic implications?

Doug Casey: In the short run, it’s resulted in a lot of profits for Chinese corporations and employment for the Chinese workers who are building these things. Locals are hired mostly for coolie labor—which I find amusing and ironic.

Everyone in the West seems to think the Chinese are going to take over the world. While I acknowledge China’s hyperbolic rise over the last 40 years, I question whether the Belt and Road won’t be a huge overreach. It could backfire for several reasons.

Number one, the benefits of the Belt and Road initiative are primarily political. It’s planned and run on the basis of politics, much more than economics. It’s basically a government boondoggle—about the biggest in history. Building infrastructure in unstable third-world countries is generally a sucker bet for lots of reasons; it’s likely to be shockingly unprofitable. It may lead to the bankruptcy of a lot of Chinese banks and corporations that are involved with it.

Number two, a lot of countries are starting to see it as Chinese neocolonialism. I think the natives are going to find the Chinese much more unpleasant colonial masters than the Europeans. Among other things, massive numbers of Chinese people are immigrating to Africa. It’s a guaranteed formula for conflict.

I suspect it’s going to end badly for the Chinese politically and economically, especially in Africa, which produces nothing but raw materials and poor people. When Europeans and Americans stop shipping billions in capital, technology, and food to the Dark Continent, the progress it’s made will go into reverse because its political and cultural mores are hopeless. That’s why the infrastructure in most places south of the Sahara—railroads, roads, waterways, utilities, you name it—have collapsed in the years since the Europeans left despite trillions in aid and investment. You can see it happening now in South Africa, which is by far the most advanced country on the continent. The Chinese will be even less successful than the Europeans.

See the rest here

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The War on Insensitivity

Posted by M. C. on February 22, 2023

As for the Roald-Dahl dust-up, what will happen now (and what is currently happening) is that A-list authors, journalists, and other official mouthpieces of the global-capitalist Simulation of Culture will make a big stink for a couple days, and then Penguin Random House and the other “big-five” publishers will go on “sensitivity-editing,” and “authenticity-editing,” and otherwise aggressively homogenizing mainstream literature until it won’t really matter which books you read because they will all be minor variations of each other that will resemble nothing so much in their utterly soul-deadening, interchangeable blandness as the lobbies of corporate offices.

CJ Hopkins

https://open.substack.com/pub/cjhopkins/p/the-war-on-insensitivity?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

So, here’s a “conspiracy theory” for you. This one is about the global-capitalist thoughtpolice and their ongoing efforts to purge society of “insensitivity.” Yes, that’s right, insensitivity. If there is anything the global-capitalist thoughtpolice can’t stand, it is insensitivity. You know, like making fun of ethnic or religious minorities, and the physically or cognitively challenged, and alternatively gendered persons, and hideously ugly persons, and monstrously fat persons, and midgets, and so on.

The global-capitalist thoughtpolice are terribly concerned about the feelings of such persons. And the feelings of other sensitive persons who are also concerned about the feelings of such persons. And everybody’s feelings, generally. So they’re purging society of any and all forms of literary content, and every other form of content, that might possibly irreparably offend such persons, and persons concerned about the feelings of such persons, and anyone who might feel offended by anything.

By now, I assume you have seen the news about the “sensitivity editing” of Roald Dahl, the author of books like James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, The Twits, and numerous others. What happened was, Dahl’s publisher, Puffin Books, hired a little clutch of “sensitivity editors” to substantively rewrite his books, purging words like “fat” and “ugly,” and Dahl’s descriptions of characters as “bald” and “female,” and inserting their own ham-handed, “sensitized” language.

What you may not be aware of is that Puffin Books is a children’s imprint of Penguin Random House, a multi-national conglomerate publishing company and a subsidiary of Bertelsmann, a nominally German but in reality global media conglomerate. Penguin Random House is one of the so-called “big five publishers” that control approximately 80% of the retail book market. The other four are Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, Hachette, and HarperCollins.

Together, these five corporate behemoths, with their hundreds of divisions, publishing groups, and imprints (e.g., Puffin Books), control the majority of what everyone reads. Pull a few books off your bookshelves at random and look up the imprints to see how many are owned by one of the “big five” publishers or one of their divisions or publishing groups.

See the rest here

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Former Biden nominee says US creating Israel ‘litmus test’ after rescinding human rights post | Middle East Eye

Posted by M. C. on February 22, 2023

Human rights lawyer James Cavallaro warns Biden administration’s decision is contributing to pattern of censoring speech critical of Israel

Remember when congress invited Netanyahu take Obama to task in a speech before congress? It makes you wonder who is pulling the strings.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/litmus-test-israel-us-academic-criticises-rescinding-human-rights-nomination

After having his nomination to an independent international human rights post rescinded by the Biden administration, US academic James Cavallaro has warned that the Biden administration is contributing to a pattern of cracking down on speech critical of Israel.

“I’m used to being attacked for doing human rights work. I would say it’s at a minimum disconcerting to feel that I’m being attacked by my own government for defending human rights, but unfortunately, I’ve hit a raw nerve,” Cavallaro said in an interview with Middle East Eye on Tuesday.

“Now you have a litmus test – think about this – you have a litmus test on Israel-Palestine for independent experts in human rights bodies in the western hemisphere.”

Cavallaro is a human rights lawyer who has taught at top American law schools, including Harvard and Stanford, and he currently teaches at Yale and UCLA. He was originally nominated by the State Department on 10 February for a position on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), referring to both north and south America.

It was not a guarantee that he would be selected, since a seat on the commission requires a vote from all members of the Organization of American States (OAS), but the State Department told Cavallaro they wanted him to be the US nominee.

‘Criticise Israel, you can be cancelled’: Outrage after former HRW chief denied Harvard fellowship

Read More »

The position appeared to be a natural fit for Cavallaro, given his extensive experience and work on human rights in Latin America over the past several decades. He opened a Human Rights Watch office in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and previously worked in groups opposing rights abuses by the government of former Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet.

He had also already served on IACHR, serving as president from 2016 to 2017, under the Barack Obama administration. 

“When they nominated me in 2013, what the folks inside State told me is one of the reasons we’re nominating you is because you’re very distant from US government,” he told MEE.

But just several days after his nomination was announced this month, Cavallaro said he received a message from Algemeiner, a New York-based news website, asking him to comment on past social media posts.

The news site had found a number of tweets Cavallaro wrote, in which he called Israel an apartheid state and also said that Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, was “bought” and “controlled” by the Israeli lobby.

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Dailywire Article-January 6 Panel Chairman Issues Warning Over Tucker Carlson Getting Tapes

Posted by M. C. on February 22, 2023

The only security risk is to Pelosi/DNC and the warfare party.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/january-6-panel-chairman-issues-warning-over-tucker-carlson-getting-tapes

By  Daniel Chaitin

The chairman of the n0w-defunct January 6 Committee warned of the “potential security risks” of U.S. Capitol security footage being released to the media.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) issued a statement hours after Axios broke the news that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gave Fox News host Tucker Carlson access to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6, 2021 — the day a crowd of people entered the U.S. Capitol, disrupting lawmakers who were meeting to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

“When the Select Committee obtained access to U.S. Capitol Police video footage, it was treated with great sensitivity given concerns about the security of lawmakers, staff, and the Capitol complex,” Thompson said.

“Access was limited to members and a small handful of investigators and senior staff, and the public use of any footage was coordinated in advance with Capitol Police. It’s hard to overstate the potential security risks if this material were to be used irresponsibly,” he added.

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