Elections

by

Maricopa County Corruption: Now It’s Your Problem, Too | Uncover DC

By Rachel Alexander

Until very recently, few Americans were familiar with Maricopa County, Arizona. It made the news only rarely and mostly for reporting its status as one of the fastest-growing counties in America. Since 2020, however, Maricopa County has gained notoriety for a very different reason. It’s emerged as an infamous cauldron of bitter political disputes and shady shenanigans crucial for denying the election to Donald Trump and his supporters.

In 2020, the votes of Maricopa County, where 6 out of 10 Arizonans live, were decisive for the narrow, declared victory of Joe Biden over Trump in the Grand Canyon State. Trump heatedly questioned the tally. Sensing misconduct, his supporters in the Arizona Legislature attempted to investigate the election. But Maricopa County politicians blocked these efforts.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the county’s governing commission, consists of five members, four RINOs and a Democrat. They stonewalled and fought efforts to scrutinize the election. Legislative and Arizona Attorney General’s attempts to audit the election results ultimately went nowhere. Key legislators backed down in response to threats from county supervisors and their powerful allies, including the leftist media and the Biden FBI. The firm that attempted the election probe, Cyber Ninjas, went out of business after a judge hammered it with fines.

In 2022, the same pattern returned. Kari Lake, a former Phoenix TV anchorwoman, ran for governor of Arizona. She adopted a MAGA platform and earned Trump’s endorsement. She was declared the loser, however, after Arizona narrowly rejected Trump’s slate of candidates for the state’s top four offices.

This time, it was thought MAGA world was ready. Maricopa County officials were credibly accused by Lake’s attorneys and expert witnesses of tampering with ballots and voting machines to prevent election-day voters—who were disproportionately Republican and pro-Lake—from successfully casting their votes. Serious questions were raised and evidence supplied about county officials violating state laws governing proper chain of custody for county ballots.

Again, Maricopa County Supervisors and allied county officials were defiant. They didn’t give an inch when fighting in the friendly terrain of the media and the anti-Trump courts. Despite mountains of evidence, Lake and the other two candidates lost all their lawsuitschallenging the election. To add insult to injury, and presumably to deter any future MAGA litigation questioning election results, a federal judge imposed sanctions against Lake’s lawyers (including no less than Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz). For his part, a state judge granted a $33,000 costs judgment against Lake’s team.

Notably, Lake had trouble finding any lawyers willing to represent her. She complained at one point she might have to settle for “Better Call Saul” because lawyers feared threats to their livelihood. The attorneys who signed on as her counsel were not even experts in election law. Two conservative Republican county supervisors in a border county, Cochise County, had concerns about election irregularities but were left high and dry. They could not find any attorneys to help them.

How could such corruption occur “in broad daylight,” as Lake complained? And why were lawyers so hesitant to help them? The answers to the two questions, it turns out, are essentially one and the same.

The corruption in Maricopa County was no secret to informed citizens in the county and state. In fact, for years, Maricopa County has been putting to shame the old-school corruption of Cook County, Illinois. I now frequently say that Maricopa County has replaced Cook County as the most corrupt county in the country.

Years before, Maricopa County officials showed they could take out prosecutors who dared to stand up to them. More than any other reason, this precedent is why Trump’s public appeals for “brave prosecutors and judges” to come forward have been in vain, particularly in Arizona.

I know because I was there fighting this corruption more than a decade ago.

Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas

First, some background on the greasy politics of the Maricopa County Supervisors. It started with a now-distant election over illegal immigration. After serving as an assistant attorney general for Arizona, I signed on as a deputy county attorney following the election of my new boss, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, a Harvard Law graduate. In 2004, the same year in which then-citizen Trump began his hit TV show “The Apprentice,” Thomas ran for Maricopa County Attorney—district attorney for greater Phoenix—with a simple slogan and promise: “Stop Illegal Immigration.” This was the first time a local prosecutor had run on such a platform.

John McCain and Jon Kyl

Overcoming the heated opposition of the political establishment, including both Republican U.S. senators (John McCain and Jon Kyl, who wouldn’t cross McCain), Thomas was elected.

The following year, Thomas went about keeping his campaign promise. After Maricopa County Sheriff’s deputies arrested U.S. Army Reservist Patrick Haab for detaining illegal immigrants at gunpoint at an Interstate rest stop, Thomas declined to prosecute him. Thomas was then picketed by left-wing activists and publicly denounced by the U.S. Attorney for Arizona and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (yes, that Sheriff Arpaio). Shortly thereafter, as Arizonans increasingly demanded a secure border, Arpaio changed course and became a staunch ally of Thomas in the fight against illegal immigration. Working together, Thomas and Arpaio single-handedly drove illegal immigrants out of the state in a massive exodus. This made international news and horrified the ruling class.

Thomas helped draft a ballot measure to end the right to bail for illegal immigrants accused of serious felonies. Seventy-seven percent of Arizonans voted for it in 2006. When Arizona courts sought to shield illegal immigrants from the law (emails surfaced showing that senior Maricopa County court personnel had instructed their staff not to enforce the measure), Thomas publicly denounced these actions.

In response, retired judges went to the Arizona State Bar—part of the state judiciary which controlled Thomas’ law license—and urged them to “do something” about Thomas. A wave of State Bar investigations ensued, 13 in total. Thus began a five-year campaign of ceaseless State Bar investigations and attacks on Thomas’ law license. It’s now standard practice for leftist bar associations to try to disbar conservative attorneys who threaten the Left. But most people don’t realize this tactic began in Arizona with the corrupt efforts to stop Thomas.

The State Bar openly retaliated against one of Thomas’ expert ethics witnesses, denying him appointment to a national legal board because of the expert’s affidavit in support of Thomas. Even leftist editors at The Arizona Republic newspaper were shocked and criticized this retaliation. (Note: The Arizona Republic conveniently has removed links to these older articles unhelpful to the left, but Thomas has provided extensive citations, and they can be found on library microfiche if searched for.)

Brave and undeterred, Thomas pressed an array of reforms. He ended plea bargaining as we know it for serious violent criminals. He pursued the death penalty in a greater number of murder cases. He refused to give special plea bargains sought by well-connected defense attorneys or judges; instead, he set up a system so that every defendant was treated the same.

Donald Stapley and Mary Rose Wilcox

Thomas advocated giving voters more information about judges’ performance when they were up for retention elections. This would have meant fewer judges would be retained by an electorate otherwise largely kept in the dark about judges’ rulings on key cases and issues. Finally, Thomas and Arpaio formed an anti-corruption task force. These probes very quickly led them to uncover serious misconduct involving two of the five members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which controlled an enormous county budget and wielded other great powers in the sprawling county. Those two supervisors, Donald Stapley and Mary Rose Wilcox, were indicted by county grand juries for corruption.

Stapley raised about $70,000 for a race where he had no opponent, then spent it on luxury items for himself and his family. In contrast, when Jesse Jackson Jr. did the exact same thing in Cook County, he was sentenced to prison for two and a half years. Wilcox failed to disclose material monetary associations on her financial disclosure forms, including ones that would influence her votes.

Thomas and Arpaio also attempted to investigate potential financial and other improprieties in the construction of the new Maricopa County courthouse. This was the most expensive public-works project in the history of Maricopa County government. Powerful politicians, judges, and lawyers were scrutinized, and initial evidence was uncovered.

For the establishment, this was the final straw. In short, the courts blocked the investigation of the Maricopa County project, scuttled the other corruption cases brought by Thomas and Arpaio, and turned the tables to investigate Thomas with “ethics” charges. One “courthouse insider” summed up the behind-the-scenes dirty war against Thomas when boasting anonymously and brazenly to The Arizona Republic, “The establishment will take care of Andrew Thomas.”

Justice Andrew Hurwitz

The courts as an institution had their own scores to settle with Thomas—and they worked closely with Maricopa County Supervisors to get rid of him. After the Arizona Supreme Court chief justice recused herself from the State Bar ethics investigations into Thomas, this left the vice chief justice, Andrew Hurwitz, as the senior justice overseeing the case. Hurwitz was the former chief of staff to liberal Democratic Governor Bruce Babbitt and a well-connected advocate of liberal causes (as noted by Heritage Action, which criticized Hurwitz’s leftist politics when he was later nominated for a federal judgeship).

Left-wing State Bar lawyers were carefully selected, in violation of the State Bar’s own rules, to drive Thomas out of the legal profession. They ultimately sought his disbarment, instituting proceedings denounced by the Maricopa County Republican Committee as “baseless and politically motivated.”

They alleged Thomas had targeted his opponents with politically motivated prosecutions. This is a joke to Republicans and Trump supporters, who know that politicians such as New York’s Democrat Attorney General have run for office promising to target Trump and escape any State Bar investigations or judicial correction. Moreover, the claim against Thomas was provably false. In fact, Thomas had tried repeatedly but unsuccessfully to hand off the investigations to other prosecutors. Incredibly, the Maricopa County Supervisors and their county manager blocked him from appointing independent special prosecutors to handle the matters. The county officials then claimed he had unfairly targeted them when he went forward with the cases himself!

I came into the picture because I helped Thomas fight back with a federal RICO lawsuit against these figures. The federal suit alleged these powerful insiders were wrongfully targeting his law license in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Robert Driscoll, a senior lawyer in the Bush Justice Department and commentator on the Fox News Channel, vouched for this lawsuit. The State Bar was so incensed that they then targeted my law license for allegedly filing a frivolous lawsuit (I wasn’t even named as an attorney on the lawsuit until after it was drafted and filed, that was how minimal my role was, and the lawsuit was withdrawn a couple of months later). They did so even though Thomas eventually was disbarred—as the lawsuit correctly predicted—in violation of his rights, thereby directly proving the suit’s validity.

The Maricopa County Supervisors prevented Thomas from having even a semblance of a fair trial. This was because, in the words of the left-wing Arizona Republic, they “repeatedly fired” Thomas’ lawyers. This happened no fewer than five times, in clear violation of his civil rights. Nevertheless, they got away with it—just as these powerful establishment figures got away with their Trump-related antics in the 2020 and 2022 elections.

These actions were only their latest display of shameless audacity. To facilitate the lynching of Thomas, the Maricopa County Supervisors had earlier voted to “fire” Andrew Thomas from handling county civil legal matters. They replaced him with the law firm of the president of the State Bar! Even The Arizona Republic questioned this outrageous move. Years later, the Arizona Court of Appeals struck down this move as illegal—but only after they had succeeded in ousting Thomas.

The final kicker: Some of the supervisors got rich from these machinations. Stapley, Wilcox, and other Maricopa County officials filed lawsuits against their own entity, Maricopa County, related to alleged wrongful prosecutions on which the Thomas disbarment was partially based. This included claims by three out of five Maricopa County Board of Supervisors members at the time, officials who directly or through subordinates repeatedly fired Thomas’s lawyers and disrupted his defense.

The Arizona Republic editorialized that these claims were “an insult to taxpayers.” The process set up for settling these cases, they wrote, “is rife with opportunity for self-dealing and abuse.” The county manager handling the claims “works at the pleasure of the very people who would benefit from the quiet, discreet, out-of-the-public-view mediation process he has constructed.” But they got away with it yet again. Ultimately, millions of dollars were handed out to Maricopa County officials by subordinates of the Maricopa County government without their having to prove their case to a jury.

All of this happened even though Thomas was clearly and provably innocent of wrongdoing. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to the two separate grand juries of Arizona citizens who investigated these very matters. One was a federal grand jury impaneled and controlled by the Obama Justice Department working with a politicized FBI. If this lawfare tactic sounds familiar to patriots today, note that the current practice of DOJ/FBI targeting of conservative mavericks was honed in Arizona many years before the current situation.

Former Judge William O’Neil

The other grand jury was a state one, overseen by Judge William O’Neil. Yes, this was the same Judge O’Neil who later oversaw Thomas’ disbarment trial as State Bar disciplinary judge and refused to recuse himself — he ultimately wrote the disbarment order! As noted in an official Arizona Supreme Court opinion, O’Neil ridiculously claimed he “did not recall” presiding over the state grand-jury investigation of one of Arizona’s most prominent elected officials at the time. Liar.

Both grand juries, federal and state, declined to charge Thomas. In response to media reports about the investigation (he was never contacted by law enforcement), Thomas publicly volunteered to speak to the federal grand jurors but wasn’t taken up on his offer. At all times, Thomas answered every question publicly and under oath, never taking the Fifth Amendment.

Law Professor Ronald Rotunda

Esteemed legal experts were astounded by this circus. Ronald Rotunda, a law professor at the Chapman University School of Law, was one of the nation’s leading authorities on constitutional law and legal ethics. He stated in an affidavitthat the Bar proceedings were initiated unlawfully. Rotunda noted that John Phelps, the CEO of the Arizona State Bar, “without the benefit of any statute or rule, initiated and insinuated himself into an ethics investigation.” Rotunda stated,

“In my forty years of experience as a practicing lawyer, legal scholar, and law professor, concentrating in the areas of legal ethics and constitutional law, I have never witnessed, confronted, nor heard of a situation where an administrative or executive officer of a state bar organization has initiated and commenced an ethics investigation against a lawyer, without any specific legal authority authorizing his actions.” Rotunda added, “it is my opinion that [the] initiation of the Bar investigations against Mr. Thomas, et al. was without benefit of law and illegal, and consequently violated the due process rights of the investigative subjects.“

He concluded, “The State Bar of Arizona’s reckless use and false representation of its authority to initiate investigations of attorneys is a denial of the fundamental right to due process applicable to disciplinary investigations.“

Another key witness was former Rep. Bob Barr. A former U.S. Attorney in Georgia who later served in Congress, Barr was one of the House Managers of the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton.

Former Representative Bob Barr (1995-2003)

In a series of affidavits, Barr concluded the process used against Thomas “violates the State Bar’s rules and procedures and, more importantly, violates Mr. Thomas et al.’s constitutionally-protected due process and equal protection rights.” The State Bar had violated its own “rule requiring a written complaint to be lodged prior to the initiation of any ethics investigation.” Instead, “Independent Bar Counsel has represented that there are no written complaints and that he is maintaining an ‘open file’ with the State Bar of Arizona.”

“The due process violation inherent in this procedure is obvious,” Barr explained. “Without specific notice of the complaints against them and the facts that inform those complaints, it is impossible for Mr. Thomas et al. to adequately defend themselves against those charges. Moreover, without written documentation of the complaints pending against them, the investigation can morph and grow regardless of any defense offered by Mr. Thomas et al. This is utterly contrary to the notions of fairness and justice in this country and does not amount to procedural due process by any reasonable or legal concept thereof.“

Since other attorneys given the benefit of the rule are treated differently, Barr noted, “This disparate treatment is a violation of Mr. Thomas et al.’s right to equal protection of the law under both the U.S. Constitution and the Constitution of Arizona.” Moreover, “prosecutors…enjoy absolute immunity from civil liability for their actions in initiating prosecutions…the State Bar is employing its power improperly to interfere with the prosecutorial discretion of Mr. Thomas.”

Barr agreed with Rotunda that initiating the State Bar proceedings against Thomas was “illegal.” He added, “The blatant disregard for the rule of law” here “and failure to abide by the State Bar’s own rules is not only unusual, it is practically unheard of.”

Finally, Barr stated that the negative actions taken by the State Bar and State Bar president against one of Thomas’ expert witnesses, Ernest Calderon, who was a former State Bar president himself, “is a clear and unambiguous threat” and an “illegal threatagainst a witness” that was never retracted by the State Bar or Arizona Supreme Court.

“The most widely-recognized example of witness intimidation is in the criminal prosecution of members of the mafia,” Barr noted. He stressed, “a threat issued to a witness in one prosecution can have the very real effect of chilling witness testimony in many prosecutions….That general statement risks chilling witness testimony in any ethics investigation against Mr. Thomas and those to be allied with Mr. Thomas.“

“If the Arizona State Bar is willing to retaliate against an attorney who served only as a witness for Mr. Thomas,” Barr stated, “there is no reason to believe it would not retaliate against attorneys who represent Mr. Thomas or others who are being investigated based upon allegations made by the State Bar.” Additionally, “The State Bar has an outstanding and unrepudiated threat against attorneys and witnesses who may testify or act on behalf of Mr. Thomas et al. The foregoing situation is extraordinary, unprecedented, and a violation of the investigative subject’s right to due process.“

Even leftist hack editors and writers for The Arizona Republic spoke up for Thomas. Editors wrote a column when the State Bar investigations commenced entitled “Bar’s Witch Hunt.” Chronicling the Thomas case, establishment political consultant turned columnist Bob Robb didn’t mince words. The normally staid columnist wrote, in a series of columns, that the case showed the “credibility of the Supreme Court’s disciplinary process has been severely shaken“; “the gross overcharging…gives credence to Thomas’ claim that he is the victim of a witch hunt“; and the final disbarment ruling made clear Thomas “never had a chance” at fair treatment by the judicial panel. Others chimed in, including American Thinker, which published an article titled “Corruption in Maricopa County.”

By then, however, Thomas was out of office, having narrowly lost his race for Attorney General of Arizona because of these smears (I wonder about fraud in that race now, but it’s too late to investigate or prove anything). People moved on. But grassroots activists remembered him. After a panel of three legal insiders disbarred Thomas in April 2012, the Maricopa County Republican Committee and other Republican Party leaders gave him a standing ovation when he addressed them. So did other GOP and Tea Party groups in Maricopa County.

Oh, and the sanctions that were threatened and/or imposed against Kari Lake and her attorneys in 2022? That same intimidation tactic was used and perfected against Thomas, me, and another attorney swept up in the inquisition. Following our sham trial, Thomas was disbarred, and I was suspended for six months from the practice of law for exposing their wrongdoing in the RICO suit.

The Arizona State Bar then demanded that we repay the cost of their show trial—over half a million dollars. Faced with that looming threat, our lawyers being fired yet again by the county supervisors, and a justice system hostile to our rights, we were coerced into agreeing to costs of over $100,000. The State Bar did not seek to convert the ruling into a judgment against us and collect it but seemed content to let the outstanding financial threat chill our criticism of the proceedings (the threat didn’t work). Nevertheless, a decade later, I still can’t practice law until I agree to pay this outrageous sum. This is an amount of money that I, like most people, don’t have.

Thomas was no quitter. He fought back as best he could. Following his disbarment, Thomas announced his candidacy for governor of Arizona. Running on a platform of securing the border and standing up to activist judges, he collected signatures from just under 10,000 Arizona voters, almost double the number required to qualify for the ballot. More than 4,500 Arizona citizens contributed $5 to his campaign. Thomas collected many of these by campaigning door-to-door in Maricopa County. As a result, he qualified for more than $750,000 in Clean Elections funding for his campaign.

Thomas received the endorsements of the immediate past state Republican Party chairman, the immediate past Maricopa County Republican Party chairman, numerous conservative grassroots leaders, and Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin. Malkin described Thomas as a “true and tested independent leader” and praised him for withstanding “nightmarish abuse at the hands of the state’s liberal judicial and legal elites.” Despite being vastly outspent by multi-millionaire establishment opponents and taking on the no-holds-barred opposition of the ruling class, Thomas ran a strong race and successfully promoted the conservative causes for which he had sacrificed his career.

Thomas’ gubernatorial campaign drew greater attention to the need for judicial and State Bar reforms. The following year, the Arizona legislature formed a joint legislative study committee to consider State Bar legislation. I assisted in part. Following the recommendations of the committee, the Arizona House of Representatives voted in 2016 to pass what the leftist media tellingly dubbed the “Andrew Thomas Revenge Bill.”

The legislation would have essentially dismantled the State Bar. In the State Senate, this legislation passed on the first vote but then failed on the second and final vote, following fierce lobbying by the State Bar and pressure from the media.

Donald Trump

The election of President Donald Trump and his signature promise to “Build the Wall” to secure the U.S. border was a triumph of the grassroots politics popular for many years in Arizona. The dark forces and ruling-class machinations that came down on President Trump and his administration were very much reminiscent of those deployed against Thomas (and me) a decade before.

Trump has expressed concern that the injustices done to him will turn into a “cold case.” All I can say, respectfully, is: Tell me about it. Our “cold case” fundamentally changed both law and politics in Arizona — and, since 2020, the country as a whole because of Arizona’s influence on national elections. The travesty done to us happened a decade ago and is now forgotten by all except for some grassroots activists and lawyers in Arizona. For the latter, the Thomas case has become Banquo’s ghost, haunting and intimidating them, and warping our elections and society.

In other words, our problem is now your problem.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors’ actions following the 2020 presidential election revealed the obstacles Thomas faced in attempting to hold accountable members of that same powerful establishment institution. Their defiant and dirty tactics in the 2022 elections were a fresh reminder that they remain shameless and unfazed by any criticism Trump supporters have hurled at them.

Real election and legal reforms are possible only by overturning the rotten, destructive rulings in the once-high-profile Thomas case and providing some measure of justice to the targets of that madness. The process followed in the Thomas case was demonstrably and outrageously violative of basic and universal civil rights. The case must be tossed on those grounds alone. Otherwise, nothing will change. These rulings still baldly intimidate prosecutors and lawyers, especially in Arizona, but increasingly the rest of America.

Source: UncoverDC

ORDER YOUR LIBERTY BOOKS TODAY!

Sovereign’s Handbook by Johnny Liberty 
(30th Anniversary Edition)
(3-Volume Printed, Bound Book or PDF)

A three-volume, 750+ page tome with an extensive update of the renowned underground classic ~ the Global Sovereign’s Handbook. Still after all these years, this is the most comprehensive book on sovereignty, economics, law, power structures and history ever written. Served as the primary research behind the best-selling Global One Audio Course. Available Now!

$99.95 ~ THREE-VOLUME PRINT SERIES
$33.33 ~ THREE-VOLUME EBOOK

Dawning of the Corona Age: Navigating the Pandemic by Johnny Freedom 
(3rd Edition)
(Printed, Bound Book or PDF)

This comprehensive book, goes far beyond the immediate impact of the “pandemic”, but, along with the reader, imagines how our human world may be altered, both positively and negatively, long into an uncertain future. Available Now!

$25.00 ~ PRINT BOOK
$10.00 ~ EBOOK

by

Counterfeit Cash Financed Midterm Democrats | The Epoch Times

Samuel Bankman-Fried, founder and former CEO of FTX, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Feb. 9, 2022. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

By Thomas McArdle

With facial recognition technology able to find a wanted man who strolls in front of a surveillance camera anywhere in the world, and artificial intelligence able to generate deepfake video impersonations so realistic that Congress began panicking about its potential for abuse over three years ago, foolproof counterfeit currency is hardly a heavy lift.

But physical cash has become almost a relic of the 20th century. Counterfeit dollars just used by Democrats to restrain the widely predicted Republican “red wave” was wealth that existed within cyberspace, the result of a bamboozling of investors perpetrated by a now-washed-up tycoon in his 20s whose treasure chest ended up consisting of play money. If you thought Republicans were the party of big business and the heartless rich, you might be wondering how Democrats managed to outspend Republicans in key races this year, like John Fetterman raking in nearly $48 million in his Pennsylvania U.S. Senate campaign, while the GOP opponent he defeated, Mehmet Oz, took in only about $12 million, (augmented by loaning himself $21 million). Or incumbent New Hampshire U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan being re-elected after raising $38 million, while her GOP challenger, Trump-backed retired Gen. Don Bolduc, pulled in a mere $2.2. million. A big part of the answer is that Democrats are now the party of the snake oil mogul.

Despite his unprepossessing image, often seen in a t-shirt and shorts, Sam Bankman-Fried is an MIT physics grad who was a billionaire before age 30. Defying the usual American entrepreneurial norms of familial stability and respect for the law, Bankman-Fried headquartered his cash cow in the tax haven of the Bahamas and, if we are to believe reports, enlisted a board of senior executives/roommates which doubled as his own polyamorous commune.

Before his financial scam came crashing to an end this month and over $2 billion in FTX clients’ investments dissolved, Bankman-Friend had handed Joe Biden $10 million during the 2020 presidential election and gave Democrats over $40 million in this year’s midterms, likely buying the party a majority in the U.S. Senate in the next Congress. Now ruined, he was the second-biggest donor to the party’s campaigns, behind only, Hungarian-born leftist billionaire currency manipulator George Soros.

Epoch Times Photo
The FTX logo and mobile app adverts are displayed on screens in London, England, on Nov. 10, 2022. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)

In dissecting FTX’s collapse, it is crucial to appreciate what too few, woefully uneducated in economic truths thanks to a union-dominated public school system, know about company valuation—that what observers accept to be a firm’s worth is always dependent on human judgment that presumes trustworthy conduct. Was Blockbuster Video worth $8.4 billion when Sumner Redstone bought it for that price in 1994? Had he known that some 16 years later, as consumers became able to “rent” movies with a click of their remote, Blockbuster would be a corporate dinosaur filing for bankruptcy, Redstone likely would have considered investing those billions elsewhere. But no one at Blockbuster knew it was headed off a cliff.

In the case of FTX, however, Bankman-Fried likely didn’t need a crystal ball to see that what he and his Caribbean playmates were presiding over was near to doom. John Ray III, appointed to replace Bankman-Fried as CEO during bankruptcy, and previously the overseer of the Enron clean-up, remarked of FTX that he had never seen “such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.”

Perhaps only a one-time adolescent math whiz absent moral scruples could possess the technical skills and lack of ethics required to pull off shifting his customers’ money back and forth between various affiliated business entities in a shell game that included using new loans to pay interest on old loans in order to present the fiction of liquidity, with celebrities like quarterback Tom Brady and TV actor Larry David enlisted to enhance FTX’s public image. Bankman-Fried even got FTX’s logo on the uniforms of all of Major League Baseball’s umpires, juxtaposing the Nike swoosh adorning those of the players. After flying so high, the firm, once thought to be worth $32 billion, is now under federal investigation for securities violations.

But the writing was on the wall long ago for the Biden administration to see. Crypto was losing a lot of people money in recent months, yet Bankman-Fried was mysteriously buying rival crypto companies like BlockFi and Voyager Digital, as the Securities and Exchange Commission apparently sat idly by.

Epoch Times Photo
Sam Bankman-Fried speaks on stage at Casa Cipriani in New York on June 23, 2022. (Craig Barritt/Getty Images for CARE For Special Children )

Add to all this the fact that Bankman-Fried’s parents are Democratic Party operatives, his father, Joseph Bankman, having helped Sen. Elizabeth Warren draft a tax bill, his mother leading an outfit called “Mind The Gap” that connects donors with Democrat candidates and causes, and his brother Gabe founding a political action committee that uses fear of future pandemics to funnel cash to Democrats.

Compare the fraudulent money FTX loaded up Democrats with to Elizabeth Holmes, disgraced CEO of multi-billion-dollar blood-testing scam firm Theranos, hosting a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign at Theranos’ Palo Alto headquarters in the spring of 2016, dangling a chance for facetime with Chelsea Clinton for those willing to cough up $2,700.

In the cases of both FTX and Theranos, unwitting investors’ cash didn’t all go down the black hole of Bankman-Fried and Holmes’ lies; they financed left-wing candidates and causes the owners of that money did not approve, and no doubt many oppose. And Democrats seem none too happy to take money invested under false pretenses.

Thus the left has found another way to use capitalism in their war against economic freedom—and every other freedom.

Source: The Epoch Times

ORDER YOUR LIBERTY BOOKS TODAY!

Sovereign’s Handbook by Johnny Liberty 
(30th Anniversary Edition)
(3-Volume Printed, Bound Book or PDF)

A three-volume, 750+ page tome with an extensive update of the renowned underground classic ~ the Global Sovereign’s Handbook. Still after all these years, this is the most comprehensive book on sovereignty, economics, law, power structures and history ever written. Served as the primary research behind the best-selling Global One Audio Course. Available Now!

$99.95 ~ THREE-VOLUME PRINT SERIES
$33.33 ~ THREE-VOLUME EBOOK

Dawning of the Corona Age: Navigating the Pandemic by Johnny Freedom 
(3rd Edition)
(Printed, Bound Book or PDF)

This comprehensive book, goes far beyond the immediate impact of the “pandemic”, but, along with the reader, imagines how our human world may be altered, both positively and negatively, long into an uncertain future. Available Now!

$25.00 ~ PRINT BOOK
$10.00 ~ EBOOK

by

Is there a link between ‘Aid to Ukraine,’ the US Democratic Party and the suspicious collapse of the FTX Crypto exchange? | RT.com

By Felix Livshitz

Breaking news throughout the first half of November has been dominated by coverage of the sudden collapse of FTX, one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges.

The crash has shaken the crypto market, lost institutional investors billions – and individual customers millions – led to official investigations of FTX in several countries, and made some question whether the Bitcoin sphere might crash and burn outright, and perhaps cause wider problems for the financial system.

Some take the view that FTX was a fraud all along, ever since its launch in April 2019. If that’s the case, it has grave implications for the US Democratic Party and Ukrainian government, as the company’s corrupt activity may have been used to fund both, openly and secretly.

Where’s the money, Zelensky?

On March 14, FTX launched a new online portal for cryptocurrency donations, Aid for Ukraine, in partnership with Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation. Through this, crypto traders, both large and small, could donate bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which FTX would convert into cash for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense to spend on weapons and other war-related expenses.

Very rapidly, the fund claimed to have amassed “over” $60 million in donations. By April 14, it was reported that just over $45.15 million of that sum had been splurged on digital rifle scopes, thermal imagers, monoculars, rations, armor, helmets, military clothing, tactical backpacks, fuel, communication devices, laptops, drones, medical supplies, and a “worldwide anti-war media campaign.”RT

©  Aid for Ukraine 

The same records show a further $10 million was spent over the next three months – leaving around $5 million in the bank, so to speak. An Aid for Ukraine social media post on November 15 said this sum was still held in reserve, and that $60 million remained of the total amount of donations received through the portal to date.

This seems very odd, particularly given that Ukraine was reported to have received $100 million in bitcoin donations, and then spent almost all of it, between February 24 and March 11 alone, before Aid for Ukraine’s establishment.  

Read more

Ukraine has taken in at least $100 million in crypto donations this year, but what have officials in Kiev done with the money?

Are we to believe that – over the course of seven months, from the time the $60 million figure was first publicized to today – no further funds at all have been donated through Aid for Ukraine? Despite the entire crypto community having been able to do so, and being actively encouraged to do so that whole time?

Official investigations into FTX, and its founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, have only just begun. However, it seems clear already that he secretly and illegally moved billions stored in the FTX exchange to its sister company Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm that he also runs.

The gaping black hole Bankman-Fried’s sleight-of-hand created meant that, when customers sought to withdraw their money from the exchange, FTX didn’t have the funds to keep up with demand. It seems he was assisted in this underhand ploy by a “back-door” specially created for him in the company’s accounting, which meant sums could be moved into and out of the exchange off the books, and without auditors or FTX employees noticing.

Much of the money taken out of FTX by Bankman-Fried has disappeared completely. The US Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission are particularly looking at whether these stolen client deposits were used to prop up Alameda in any way, which was reportedly struggling financially.

There is, as yet, no sign though that these authorities are probing an obvious lead – Aid for Ukraine. Was money moved from FTX to Alameda, then channeled to Kiev to be spent on Western – mainly US – weapons, and indeed other activities that the government and its backers in Washington, London, and elsewhere in Europe and North America would prefer to be kept hidden?

Conversely, money raised beyond the initial $60 million total could’ve been funneled out of Aid for Ukraine by Bankman-Fried to enrich himself, or secretly spent for very different purposes – such as funding the US Democratic Party’s election campaigns.


RT

Sam Bankman-Fried ©Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images 

The man behind

Bankman-Fried is a very well-connected figure indeed in US politics. Over the course of the 2020 presidential election cycle, he contributed $5.2 million to two super PACs supporting Joe Biden’s campaign, and was the overall second-largest individual donor to Biden that year.

Such extravagant spending appears trivial today. In 2021/22, he provided tens of millions to Democratic causes and candidates, becoming the party’s second-largest donor, behind only “spyless coup” specialist George Soros. 

Read more

You are under contrôle: French elites privately fear the US and new research explains why

Bankman-Fried has boasted of meeting policymakers in Washington “every two or three weeks for the last year.” Over 2022, this has included multiple audiences with senior government officials and top Biden advisers at the White House. These meetings escalated in volume around the time that the Ukraine conflict began.

On March 7, exactly one week before Aid for Ukraine was launched, his brother Gabe Bankman-Fried – who directs his political operations – visited the White House along with Jenna Narayanan, a Democratic strategist who once worked for the Democracy Alliance, which has been called the “most powerful liberal donor club” in the US.

Bankman-Fried himself then visited the White House on numerous occasions in April and May, concurrent with him donating $865,000 to the Democratic National Committee.

In early June, mere days after his last recorded White House meet-and-greet, Bankman-Fried announced he would invest up to $1 billion in further funds between then and 2024 to guarantee Biden – or whoever might take his place – won the next presidential election. 

These activities have been interpreted by many as an attempt by Bankman-Fried to ingratiate himself with politicians to further his commercial interests. It is certainly true that, at the same time, he and FTX high-rankers were attempting to influence US lawmakers on crypto regulation, to make the market more favorable for his company.

RT

Democratic Party supporters at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York. ©Sputnik / Gina Moon 

In this context, the promised $1 billion appears to be a dangled carrot, an implied promise of future financing if Bankman-Fried got his way. Accompanying him on some of these visits was Mark Wetjen, FTX head of policy and regulatory strategy, who previously served as commissioner on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under President Barack Obama – but only some. Were the other meetings related to Ukraine?

If so, the $1 billion pledge may have reflected what Bankman-Fried thought could be secretly skimmed from Aid for Ukraine for Democratic Party purposes. It’s conspicuous that in mid-October, he completely disowned that enormous commitment, saying, “That was a dumb quote. I think my messaging was sloppy and inconsistent in some cases.”

In repudiating his $1 billion promise, Bankman-Fried also quietly added that he would stop giving any money at all to political causes. It was just days later that it was announced FTX was subject to investigation in Texas for allegedly selling unregistered securities. Jump to a few weeks later, and the company had filed for bankruptcy.

Bankman-Fried clearly said something he shouldn’t have back in June – whether he got carried away by all the positive press and high-level access his political donations were receiving and wrote a proverbial check in public he couldn’t privately cash, or his comments drew unwanted attention to how much money was actually flowing into Aid for Ukraine, we do not currently know. But the truth must out.

Source: RT.com

ORDER YOUR LIBERTY BOOKS TODAY!

Sovereign’s Handbook by Johnny Liberty 
(30th Anniversary Edition)
(3-Volume Printed, Bound Book or PDF)

A three-volume, 750+ page tome with an extensive update of the renowned underground classic ~ the Global Sovereign’s Handbook. Still after all these years, this is the most comprehensive book on sovereignty, economics, law, power structures and history ever written. Served as the primary research behind the best-selling Global One Audio Course. Available Now!

$99.95 ~ THREE-VOLUME PRINT SERIES
$33.33 ~ THREE-VOLUME EBOOK

Dawning of the Corona Age: Navigating the Pandemic by Johnny Freedom 
(3rd Edition)
(Printed, Bound Book or PDF)

This comprehensive book, goes far beyond the immediate impact of the “pandemic”, but, along with the reader, imagines how our human world may be altered, both positively and negatively, long into an uncertain future. Available Now!

$25.00 ~ PRINT BOOK
$10.00 ~ EBOOK

by

Democrats Worried Republicans May Take Lead Beyond Margin Of Cheating | Babylon Bee

As Republicans continue to expand their leads in polling across the country, Democrats are worried that the leads may soon grow beyond the normal margin of Democrat cheating. 

“Yeah, normally our big-city vote harvesting machines and slimy election procedures are good for a bump of a few percentage points, but Republican poll numbers may have even grown beyond that,” said a visibly nervous DNC Chair Jaime Harrison, (they/them). “I don’t understand why people care more about feeding their kids than they do about voting in literal mega-MAGA, far-right, Nazi, alt-right, white supremacist, Nazi, fascist-adjacent Nazis. It could be the end of democracy!”

DNC operatives are hoping to close the gap by promising free abortions and gender-affirming care, as well as by sending tons of unsolicited emails to millions of voters begging for more money to save Nancy Pelosi’s job. 

Democrats warn that if Republicans gain control of Congress, it will be the end of democracy until the next election in 2024.

At publishing time, Republicans had gone up another 7 points nationally.

Source: Babylon Bee

ORDER YOUR LIBERTY BOOKS TODAY!

Sovereign’s Handbook by Johnny Liberty 
(30th Anniversary Edition)
(3-Volume Printed, Bound Book or PDF)

A three-volume, 750+ page tome with an extensive update of the renowned underground classic ~ the Global Sovereign’s Handbook. Still after all these years, this is the most comprehensive book on sovereignty, economics, law, power structures and history ever written. Served as the primary research behind the best-selling Global One Audio Course. Available Now!

$99.95 ~ THREE-VOLUME PRINT SERIES
$33.33 ~ THREE-VOLUME EBOOK

Dawning of the Corona Age: Navigating the Pandemic by Johnny Freedom 
(3rd Edition)
(Printed, Bound Book or PDF)

This comprehensive book, goes far beyond the immediate impact of the “pandemic”, but, along with the reader, imagines how our human world may be altered, both positively and negatively, long into an uncertain future. Available Now!

$25.00 ~ PRINT BOOK
$10.00 ~ EBOOK

by

November Surprise? | Lew Rockwell

Can you picture what will be? So limitless and free… Desperately in need of some stranger’s hand… In a desperate land…. — The Doors

Welcome to the season of chaos, sponsored by the Party of Chaos, America’s Democratic Party, owner and operator of the shadowy “Joe Biden” regime, dedicated to wrecking what’s left of the country — and the rest of Western Civ with it. Do you think I exaggerate? Consider for a moment that your personal ruin — the loss of your freedoms, your livelihoods, and your posterity — is at stake behind the more general demolition of our society.

We are barreling into an election that will determine the composition of Congress. There is much chatter about whether this election will be allowed to happen. Signs and portents point to a grievous loss of power for the Party of Chaos. Power is all they care about — certainly not the public interest or the common good — and a particular sort of power: the power to coerce, persecute, and punish.

It is obvious in everything they do, from the FBI swat-team home invasions of select opponents and the gross mistreatment of the January 6 defendants, to the craven censoring of public speech, to the imposition of medical tyranny and the deadly fraud of Covid shots, to the degenerate insults of their race-and-gender hustles, to their assault on the value of our money, to their sabotage of the oil-and-gas industries, to their treasonous abandonment of border control, to the deliberate perversion of policing and public order, to their promulgation of a faithless and unnecessary war, sharply against our national interests, in faraway Ukraine.

Adults understand that politics is a crooked business, but through the whole of US history until now filters existed in the public arena that allowed for enough sorting out of truth from untruth to enable the formation of a reality-based consensus — which, in turn, allowed daily life to operate coherently. The Party of Chaos has thrown the kill-switch on that crucial function by corrupting the news business and subverting the new social media. The result is a public culture of pervasive and immersive lying, and a stupendous institutional failure of the courts to correct any of that behavior.

Case-in-point: the John Durham Special Counsel Investigation on the origin of the RussiaGate fraud. It now apparently terminates in the prosecution of the tiniest minnow (Igor Danchenko) in that vast inland sea of corruption. Some of the figures who carried out the perfidious seditions of RussiaGate are still employed in the Department of Justice and the FBI, and to this day are active in the continued cover-up of the crimes committed to overthrow President Trump, notably: Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and others.

Mr. Durham is supposedly among the highest officers of the federal courts charged with enforcing a very particular region of criminality. His staff must be marinated in evidence of the RussiaGate misdeeds — reams of which have been independently documented in the public record, ranging from (just for example) the nefarious activities of figures like Nellie Ohr, wife of DOJ higher-up Bruce Ohr, working as go-between with Christopher Steele and the FBI, to the spectacular failures of Judge James Boasberg and his FISA court, not to mention the well-known machinations of Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Andrew McCabe, Rob Rosenstein, Dana Boente, James Baker, Andrew Weissmann, Jeannie Rhee, Aaron Zebley, Brandon Van Grack, Robert Mueller, and other top officials who worked sedulously against the public interest. All these remain apparently off-the-hook for their sketchy activities.

How did that happen? If the Party of Chaos loses control of its Congressional majority, Mr. Durham may have to answer that question. And until he does, American justice will remain a deeply broken institution that citizens can’t trust. In that light, how is our country any better than the most overt petty despotisms around the world? How does it deserve the citizens’ respect or even compliance?

The stakes in the midterm elections are huge for the Party of Chaos, and its worker bees may be capable of any duplicity to throw it off the rails. In my soon-to-drop next podcast, blogger Tom Luongo (of Gold, Goats, and Guns) introduces a surprising twist: the election takes place, he says, but the Party of Chaos finds a way to delay the announcement of the results via procedural shenanigans that go on for weeks after November 8, leaving the country in a state of anxious limbo. What an idea! Such a strategy would wreck the last shred of public trust in elections without having to cancel, postpone, or overtly overthrow the process. It would also invite just the sort of public protest that the Party of Chaos can spin into another insurrection narrative.

I’m strangely confident that there is a hidden column of people that love this country who will not allow this final insulting scam to succeed. Its appearance among us will shock and amaze the multitudes. The rule of the Woke Jacobin maniacs will end. And even though we’ll have to live through the wreckage they brought about, we’ll move about this strange new landscape of hardship in the light of reality-made-visible, seeing clearly what has happened and knowing what we must do to revive our country.

Source: Lew Rockwell

ORDER YOUR LIBERTY BOOKS TODAY!

Sovereign’s Handbook by Johnny Liberty 
(30th Anniversary Edition)
(3-Volume Printed, Bound Book or PDF)

A three-volume, 750+ page tome with an extensive update of the renowned underground classic ~ the Global Sovereign’s Handbook. Still after all these years, this is the most comprehensive book on sovereignty, economics, law, power structures and history ever written. Served as the primary research behind the best-selling Global One Audio Course. Available Now!

$99.95 ~ THREE-VOLUME PRINT SERIES
$33.33 ~ THREE-VOLUME EBOOK

Dawning of the Corona Age: Navigating the Pandemic by Johnny Freedom 
(3rd Edition)
(Printed, Bound Book or PDF)

This comprehensive book, goes far beyond the immediate impact of the “pandemic”, but, along with the reader, imagines how our human world may be altered, both positively and negatively, long into an uncertain future. Available Now!

$25.00 ~ PRINT BOOK
$10.00 ~ EBOOK

by

30th Anniversary Edition ~ Sovereign’s Handbook by Johnny Liberty Now Available! | Liberty International

If you have ever heard talk or been to a seminar about “sovereignty”, then very likely those conversations were influenced by the foundational research of the author and educator.

His research and educational journey reaching millions of people worldwide began in 1992 and culminated in 2022 with the 3-Volume book release – his final word on the subject.

At the turn of the millennium his books and audio courses facilitated in part –  a sovereignty and tax-honesty movement that involved millions of Americans.

This 3 Volume series comprises the life’s work of Johnny Liberty filled with comprehensive insights into the last few hundred years of history, law, economics, money, citizenship and governance. 

These books show how it is supposed to be done in a constitutional Republic. 

How did We the People get to where we are today? 

What can we do to reclaim our inherent sovereignty and natural rights? 

Many of the answers may be found within these revolutionary pages. Available as a paperback, E-Book (PDF) or an Amazon Kindle format. Thank you for supporting the author. 

Sincerely, 

With Freedom For All, 
~ Johnny Liberty

Sovereign’s Handbook by Johnny Liberty (30th Anniversary Edition)

  • A three-volume, 750 page tome with an extensive update of the renowned underground classic ~ the Global Sovereign’s Handbook.
  • Still after all these years, it is the most comprehensive book on sovereignty, economics, law, power structures and history ever written.
  • Served as the primary research behind the best-selling Global One Audio Course.
  • ORDER NOW!
  • $99.99 ~ THREE VOLUME PRINT SERIES
  • $33.33 ~ THREE VOLUME E-BOOK

The 3 Volume Sovereign’s Handbook by Johnny Liberty is textbook material for everyone including educators/teachers, homeschoolers, historians, activists, leaders/politicians, attorneys/judges/law schools, police officers, and state Citizens/Nationals. 

Order Additional Books, Audios & Videos from The Freedom Catalog: LibertyInternationalBooks.com 
Sovereign’s Handbook (Website): http://SovereignsHandbook.com 
Dawning of the Corona Age (Website): DawningoftheCoronaAge.com 
Liberty International News: http://LibertyInternational.news 

ORDER YOUR LIBERTY BOOKS TODAY!

Sovereign’s Handbook by Johnny Liberty 
(30th Anniversary Edition)
(3-Volume Printed, Bound Book or PDF)

A three-volume, 750+ page tome with an extensive update of the renowned underground classic ~ the Global Sovereign’s Handbook. Still after all these years, this is the most comprehensive book on sovereignty, economics, law, power structures and history ever written. Served as the primary research behind the best-selling Global One Audio Course. Available Now!

$99.95 ~ THREE-VOLUME PRINT SERIES
$33.33 ~ THREE-VOLUME EBOOK

Dawning of the Corona Age: Navigating the Pandemic by Johnny Freedom 
(3rd Edition)
(Printed, Bound Book or PDF)

This comprehensive book, goes far beyond the immediate impact of the “pandemic”, but, along with the reader, imagines how our human world may be altered, both positively and negatively, long into an uncertain future. Available Now!

$25.00 ~ PRINT BOOK
$10.00 ~ EBOOK

by

Police Report Proves Plainclothes Electronic Surveillance Unit Members Were Embedded Among Jan. 6 Protesters | The Epoch Times

By Patricia Tolson

While there is growing speculation that federal agents and Capitol Police were involved in instigating acts of violence during the Jan. 6, 2021 protests and recording responses for the purposes of entrapment, evidence now proves that “plainclothes” members of a special Electronic Surveillance Unit (ESU) were embedded among the protesters for the purposes of conducting video surveillance. Evidence also points to a day of security deficiencies and police provocation for the purpose of entrapment.

According to a report—First Amendment Demonstrations, issued Jan. 3, 2021, by Chief of Police Robert Contee of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), Homeland Security Bureau, Special Operations Division, obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times—the MPD began to activate Civil Disturbance Unit (CDU) platoons on Jan. 4, 2021. Full activation of 28 platoons was scheduled to occur on the following two days.

Cover page for the First Amendment Demonstrations report, issued January 3, 2021 by the Metropolitan Police Department, Homeland Security Bureau, Special Operations Division.
Cover page for the First Amendment Demonstrations report, issued Jan. 3, 2021, by the Metropolitan Police Department, Homeland Security Bureau, Special Operations Division. (Obtained by The Epoch Times)

According to the Department of Justice website, “A CDU is composed of law enforcement officers who are trained to respond to protests, demonstrations, and civil disturbances for the purpose of preventing violence, destruction of property, and unlawful interference with persons exercising their rights under law.”

The objective of MPD was “to assist with the safe execution of any First Amendment demonstration and ensure the safety of the participants, public, and the officers.” CDU personnel and Special Operations Division  (SOD) members were to “monitor for any demonstration and/or violent activity and respond accordingly,” according to the report.

There has been speculation that federal agents and Capitol Police were involved in instigating acts of violence during the protests for the purposes of entrapment. As Red State reported in October 2021, “multiple surveillance videos show masked men opening up the doors to the U.S. Capitol Building to allow protesters to enter. In fact, one video shows them entering while Capitol Police officers simply stand around. Yet, we have no idea who those men are.”

The ‘Covert Cadre’ of ‘Provocateurs’

On a Dec.  7, 2021, episode of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the attorney for several Jan. 6 prisoners, Joseph McBride, identified a man tagged on the internet by so-called “Sedition Hunters” as “Red-Faced 45.” The man, dressed in red from head to toe—with even his face painted red—appears in a video engaging in continuous dialogue with uniformed personnel and others whom McBride insists are agents embedded in the crowd. McBride said the man is “clearly a law enforcement officer.”

“He passes out weapons, sledgehammers, poles, mace. Some of those things come in contact with some of the other protesters who have subsequently been charged with possessing dangerous weapons and are using dangerous weapons at the Capitol. That is clearly entrapment.

That is clearly the government creating conditions of dangerousness and entrapping members of the crowd to possess weapons and possibly use them for reasons that we cannot comprehend.”

On Jan. 13, 2021, J. Michael Waller, senior analyst for Strategy at the Center for Security Policy, published a first-hand account of his observations. Waller is also President of Georgetown Research, a political risk and private intelligence company in Washington, D.C.; and was founding editorial board member of NATO’s peer-reviewed Defence Strategic Communications journal (2015–2018), and a senior analyst with Wikistrat. He is convinced people were embedded in the crowd to execute “an organized operation planned well in advance of the January 6 joint session of Congress.”

J. Michael Waller, Senior Analyst for Strategy at the Center for Security Policy.
J. Michael Waller, Senior Analyst for Strategy at the Center for Security Policy. (With permission from J. Michael Waller.)

According to Waller, a “covert cadre” of people were scattered throughout the crowd to encourage people toward the Capitol, including “fake Trump protesters” he suspected were Antifa “wearing Trump or MAGA hats backwards.”

The Epoch Times reported on Jan. 1 that senior federal law enforcement officials refused to answer questions about an Arizona man named Ray Epps, captured on video the day before the rally wearing a Trump hat repeatedly encouraging protesters to “go into the Capitol” the next day. Many were suspicious of him. Chants of “fed, fed, fed” drown him out. On Jan. 6, he is seen telling the crowd “we are going to the Capitol, where all of our problems are.”

Ray Epps encourages protesters to go into the Capitol the night before the siege of January 6, 2021.
Ray Epps encourages protesters to go into the Capitol the night before the breach on Jan. 6, 2021. (Villain Report/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)

Epps is also seen standing before a bike rack barricade, whispering into the ear of a protester wearing his Trump hat backwards. Moments later, that man is joined by others in tearing down the barricade. Epps is then seen running with the crowd toward the Capitol Building. Despite the evidence, Epps has not had any charges filed against him and his photo has been removed from the government’s list of most-wanted people from the event.

Bobby Powell host of “The Truth is Viral” podcast, has several videos exposing two men, clad all in black, whom he believes are FBI informants. They are seen breaking windows, attacking the Capitol building, and even pushing people inside.

McBride finds it strange that these “provocateurs,” as he calls them, have yet to be charged, despite their having a much more active role in the Capitol incident than some who were charged, including some individuals who never even set foot on Capitol grounds.

The Proof

Unknown to the public until now, the First Amendment Demonstrations report also reveals that an undisclosed number of “plainclothes” MPD ESU “members” were embedded into the crowd to “document the actions of the demonstrators and MPD’s response to any civil disobedience or criminal activity.”

In 2016, the MPD purchased 2,800 body-worn cameras.

It is unclear who the MPD ESU “members” were. However, they are never referred to as “officers” or “police.” Of the 37 “Specialized Units” listed as part of the MPD, an ESU is not among them. In order for other security personnel to recognize embedded ESU members among the protesters, they wore a specific “bracelet on their left wrist identifying them as MPD personnel,” the report stated.

Photo of bracelet worn my plainclothes members of the Metrolpilitan Police Department's Electronic Surveillance Unit, embedded in the crowds on January 6, 2021.
Photo of bracelet worn by plainclothes members of the Metropolitan Police Department’s Electronic Surveillance Unit, embedded in the crowds on Jan. 6, 2021 to “document the actions of the demonstrators and MPD’s response to any civil disobedience or criminal activity.” (Metropolitan Police Department First Amendment Demonstrations report.)

Because he didn’t assume the job as police chief until Jan. 2, 2021, Waller believes Contee inherited rather than set up the ESU. However, Waller is confident “this report raises a lot of questions.”

“While it is admittedly an important type of unit to have in the nation’s capital, electronic surveillance requires warrants,” Waller told The Epoch Times. “The word surveillance itself implies intrusive rather than passive monitoring of people, in which case it would be required for the police to get warrants to conduct electronic surveillance on people. What kind of warrants were asked for and under which jurisdiction? Were they issued? If not, why? Are such warrants necessary for the type of surveillance this unit was doing and how does it work? This raises a huge amount of questions about an entirely new kind of surveillance unit by the police chief of the nation’s capital.”

Waller also said the reference to “members” of the unit, as opposed to “officers” or “agents,” is also very disturbing. While he said “the rest of the memorandum sounds very disciplined in it’s language and specific,” that it doesn’t identify “officers” as members of the Electronic Surveillance Unit “is very troubling.”

“Are they using private contractors? Are they using political volunteers?” Waller posed. “Are using paid agents of different types? We don’t know. This is something the public has a right to know and we need to get to the bottom of it. If the D.C Police is running electronic surveillance on American citizens without warrants, this could be a very serious breach of our civil liberties.”

Even after Capitol occupation and violence on January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill Police made no attempt to apprehend "Q Anon Man," who is on the Senate steps just a few feet from the Capitol Hill Police line. This photo was taken after the Capitol Hill Police removed protesters from inside the Senate wing of the Capitol.
Even after Capitol occupation and violence on Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill Police made no attempt to apprehend “Q Anon Man,” who is on the Senate steps just a few feet from the Capitol Hill Police line. This photo was taken after the Capitol Hill Police removed protesters from inside the Senate wing of the Capitol. (Courtesy of J. Michael Waller)

Intentional Security Deficiencies

An Oct. 29, 2021 report by Politico exposed that a 17-page strategy report called “The Civil Disturbance Unit Operational Plan,” showed that police made plans for plainclothes “officers” to monitor protesters and carry out five objectives:

  1. To provide an environment in which lawful First Amendment activity can be safely demonstrated.
  2. To prevent any adverse impact to the legislative process associated with unlawful demonstration activity.
  3. To effectively mitigate actions associated with civil disorder; safely respond to crimes of violence and destruction/defacing of property.
  4. To safeguard and prevent any property damage directed at the US Capitol, West Front Inaugural Platform, and all Congressional buildings.
  5. Establish and maintain a fixed march route while excluding access to counter-protestors to minimize potential for violent interactions.”

However, because the CDU was understaffed and unprepared, it failed in all its objectives.

According to a 140-page report issued by then-Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton—”Review of the Events Surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Takeover of the U.S. Capitol”—Capitol Police’s CDU was ordered by supervisors not to use the department’s most powerful tools, like stun guns. Bolton’s report, which has not yet been widely released to the public, also contends “heavier, less-lethal weapons,” including stun grenades, “were not used that day because of orders from leadership.”

The CDU was given riot shields, many locked in a bus some distance away, that “shattered upon impact.” They had expired weapons that didn’t work and inadequate training.

Bolton’s report also noted that officials were warned in an intelligence assessment three days before the protest that “Stop the Steal’s propensity to attract white supremacists, militia members, and others who actively promote violence may lead to a significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike” and that “Congress itself is the target.”

A man authorities identified as Jerry Braun outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
A man authorities identified as Jerry Braun outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (DOJ via The Epoch Times)

However, reports surfaced that then acting House Sergeant-at-Arms Timothy Blodgett sent a memo to lawmakers informing them that security officials found that “there does not exist a known, credible threat against Congress or the Capitol Complex that warrants the temporary security fencing.”

Some Capitol Police officers were reportedly told to go home amid staffing shortages, reported Business Insider.

According to the “UNITED STATES CAPITOL POLICE TIMELINE OF EVENTS FOR JANUARY 6, 2021 ATTACK,” also obtained by The Epoch Times, “USCP Deputy Chief Gallagher replies” to the Department of Defense (DOD) “via text” on Jan. 3, 2021, “that a request for National Guard support is not forthcoming at this time after consultation” with Chief of Police (COP) Steven Sund.

On Jan. 4, 2021, “COP Sund asked Senate Sergeant at Arms (SSAA) Michael Stenger and House Sergeant at Arms (HSAA) Paul Irving for authority to have National Guard to assist with security for the January 6, 2021 event based on briefings with law enforcement partners and revised intelligence assessment.”

• COP Sund’s request is denied. SSAA and HSAA tells COP Sund to contact General Walker at DC National Guard to discuss the guard’s ability to support a request if needed.
• COP Sund notifies General Walker of DC National Guard, indicating that the USCP may need DC National Guard support for Jan. 6, 2021, but does not have the authority to request at this time.
• General Walker advises COP Sund that in the event of an authorized request, DC National Guard could quickly repurpose 125 troops helping to provide DC with COVID-related assistance. Troops would need to be sworn in as USCP.

However, the timeline shows it took over three hours and five frantic requests before the National Guard was deployed.

During his opening remarks before two Senate committees on March 3, 2021, Walker told members of Congress he received a “frantic call” from Sund in the early afternoon advising that the security perimeter of the Capitol was being breached. However, military leaders informed him that deploying troops would not be “good optics.”

During testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Piatt and Flynn denied making such comments.

At the hearing, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene informed the committee three people were involved in turning down repeated requests for the deployment of the National Guard: “Chuck Schumer in the Senate, Nancy Pelosi in the House, and Mayor Muriel Bowser. Also involved, are the SSAA Stenger, who answers directly to Schumer, and HSAA Irving, who answers directly to Pelosi.”

National Guard troops leave Washington after being stationed there for four months following the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, on May 24, 2021.
National Guard troops leave Washington after being stationed there for four months following the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, on May 24, 2021. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

On Jan. 22, 2021, reports began to surface with images of National Guard members who were forced to stay in nearby parking garages in near-freezing temperatures sparking outrage among lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle.

In stark contradiction to then acting House Sergeant-at-Arms Timothy Blodgett’s assessment that no “credible threat against Congress or the Capitol Complex” existed to warrant “temporary security fencing,” there are multiple admonishments in the First Amendment Demonstrations report of the importance “for the members to monitor the fence line” and orders that “all members” were to “monitor 16th Street and the surrounding area for any potential issues or demonstrations.”

“Members assigned to the bicycle rack” were ordered to “restrict pedestrian and vehicle movement upon making the closure of the police lines.”

“The bicycle rack, in conjunction with police cars and blocking vehicles will create a barrier in which no person or vehicle will be allowed to pass,” the report said.

However, video evidence shows police waving protesters past bike racks and even removing them to open a path into the restricted areas to encourage people to move toward the Capitol Building.

A March 2, 2021, USCP Report of Investigation regarding the incident, also obtained by The Epoch Times, confirms that on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, “an Unknown Officer violated USCP Directive 2053.013, Rules of Conduct, when they allegedly waived unauthorized persons into a restricted area secured by bike racks toward the US Capitol during an insurrection.” Evidence in the case included the “video posted to twitter, dated 01/06/21 ” and “CCTV of the East Front of the US Capitol, dated 01/06/21.”

On Monday, Feb. 1, 2021, then Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) Commander of the United States Capitol Police, Inspector Michael Shaffer, sent an email with the Twitter video of the unidentified officer (UO) to Inspectors Amy Hyman (Senate Division), Thomas Loyd (Capitol Division), Kimberley Bolinger (House Division) and Acting Inspector Jessica Baboulis (Library Division) requesting assistance in identifying the UO. All parties responded to Shaffer that they were unable to identify the UO.

The recommendation was that the report “be APPROVED and the case CLOSED.”

On Feb. 4, 2021, this case was put on hold pending a review by the U.S. Attorney’s Office of Public Corruption. No further information is available.

Provocation and Entrapment

In a June 10 interview with EpochTV’s “Facts Matter,” Julie Kelly—a political consultant in Illinois and senior contributor for American Greatness—described Jan. 6, 2021, as “an inside job” and “something Democrats and some Republicans and federal agencies put together to entice” and “entrap” people who went to hear President Donald Trump’s speech. She noted that the FBI used agents to try to infiltrate the so-called militia groups.

Jeremy Brown exposed a video of FBI Terrorist Task Force agents attempting to recruit him to spy on fellow Oath Keepers.

The Department of Justice still won’t answer questions about Ray Epps, an Arizona resident captured on video encouraging protesters to breach the Capitol Building.

On January 6, 2021, Capitol Police fire tear gas into pro-Trump protesters well before the violence began. Even with the tear gas, the crowd remained orderly.
Capitol Police fire tear gas into pro-Trump protesters well before the violence began on Jan. 6, 2021. Even with the tear gas, the crowd remained orderly. (Courtesy of J. Michael Waller)

Kelly also noted how Capitol Police used flash bangs, teargas, and rubber bullets “to inflame the crowd and provoke a lot of the confrontations” seen in videos now being used as evidence to arrest, charge and incarcerate those who attended the rally.

More specifically, she accused Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and Democrat Majority Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of “intentionally” leaving Capitol grounds unsecured.” She further alleged it was a “setup” designed specifically to cripple the MAGA movement.

While Bolton’s report said “heavier, less-lethal weapons,” including stun grenades, “were not used that day because of orders from leadership,” the Capitol Police timeline says United States Capitol Police (USCP) personnel “deploy[ed] munitions at the Rotunda door” at 1645 hours (4:45 p.m.) where protesters were alleged to be “pushing in doors and breaking windows.” Three minutes later, USCP deployed “chemical munitions on Lower West Terrace to disperse insurrectionists.”

Police release tear gas into a crowd of demonstrators during clashes outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.
Police release tear gas into a crowd of demonstrators during clashes outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. Still, the crowd remained orderly. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

Video footage found at Gateway Pundit shows flash grenades being launched by Capitol Police into a group of protesters, consisting of women, children, and elderly people, who were standing peacefully behind barriers. According to American Greatness, Capitol Police were also firing on the crowd with rubber bullets. The approximate time of the confrontation was around 1:36 p.m. However, the USCP Timeline does not mention the deployment of these flash grenades.

Another video, which still exists on TeaParty.org, was filmed by Kash Kelly from ground level where the flash grenades went off. Kelly, who is now himself in prison regarding pretrial release violations regarding a previous charge and the subsequent charges related to his presence in Washington, is shown ensuring the evacuation of women in the area where the flash grenades exploded.

“The police started shooting at people,” Kelly says. “There were kids in the crowd.”

More extensive video footage, analyzed by Ray Dietrich of Red Voice Media, shows “the beginning of violence on January 6.”

An unidentified USCP officer is seen repeatedly yelling down to the crowd, assembled peacefully below his position, advising that if they “want to get a good picture” they should “go up into the bleachers.”

“The video shows the moment either stun grenades or tear gas canisters were deployed into the crowd of protestors,” Dietrich says as the video plays out. “The question I have, after a 20-year career in law enforcement, is why were these munitions deployed? I have picked this video apart and many more, and cannot see why the USCP used this force against the crowd. There is no fighting and no violence, so why did they target these people with less-lethal weapons?”

“What happened next?” Dietrich asks rhetorically. “Chaos. Violence. The crowd fought back. The Capitol was breached.”

As the stunned crowd scurries in the attack, police can be seen spraying people in the face with pepper spray. In another segment, three police officers are beating a protester who is being held on the ground. In a measure that further escalates the tension, police begin deploying tear gas into the already frantic crowd. In a course of 20 minutes, a once peaceful scene descends into total chaos.

In June 2021, reports surfaced that the Justice Department had begun to release its own video footage, including footage from body-worn cameras that allegedly show assaults against police officers defending the U.S. Capitol.

A summary of findings shows that:

  • Evidence shows that until the deployment of munitions, the crowds were peaceful.
  • MPD Electronic Surveillance Unit (ESU) members were embedded into the crowd to “document the actions of the demonstrators and MPD’s response to any civil disobedience or criminal activity.”
  • Of the 37 “Specialized Units” listed as part of the Metropolitan Police Department, an ESU is not among them.

Source: The Epoch Times

by

“2000 Mules” based on hard facts | Washington Times

By Bob Segal

I recently watched the Dinesh D’Souza film “2000 Mules.” At the very least, the movie makes a compelling case using what appears to be incontrovertible evidence that not only was there massive “ballot stuffing” fraud in the key swing states, but that the fraud literally stole the election from former President Donald Trump and gave it to President Biden.

“2000 Mules” bases its conclusions primarily upon cellphone tracking data provided by carriers and surveillance video of ballot drop boxes provided by multiple state governments. The only ways to dismiss the film’s conclusion that Mr. Biden’s victory derived from massive ballot stuffing is to show that the data used to track the cell phones was corrupt, the analysis of the data was flawed or the videos received from the respective governments were doctored. No one has established any such improprieties, yet the mainstream media’s knee-jerk reaction is to reject the film and its conclusions and offer absurd suggestions to explain how the data and video evidence is false.

It has been suggested that the people in the videos are election workers retrieving ballots from the boxes or that the cellphone data is of taxi drivers who happen to pass the ballot boxes. All one must do to reject such nonsense is watch the film.

In a perfect journalistic world populated by real journalists, this film would indicate a large amount of smoke worthy of investigation. But again, the same super-partisan, leftist media is making zero effort to get to the truth. I challenge any Democrat, Trump hater, any Never Trumper to watch the film and see whether their rock-solid belief in the honesty of Mr. Biden’s election remains so afterward.

Donald J. Trump: “Highly respected Dinesh D’Souza, working together with Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote, just released a trailer to their new movie, “2,000 Mules,” that shows the world exactly how the 2020 Presidential Election was Rigged and Stolen. The movie exposes the lies of the Democrats, RINOs, and Fake News who say it was the “most secure election in history.” It was, perhaps, the least secure in history. The ballot box was stuffed, and stuffed like never before—and it’s all on video. Ballots were trafficked and sold in a massive operation in each Swing State. The evidence is so damning, what will the cowards who sat and did nothing about the stolen election say now? The way our votes were taken away is a disgrace to our Nation. It must be fixed.”

Source: The Washington Times

by

Arizona Enacts Law Requiring Proof of Citizenship to Vote in Presidential Elections | The Epoch Times

People wait in line to vote at a polling place at the Scottsdale Plaza Shopping Center, in Scottsdale, Arizona, on November 3, 2020. – The US started voting Tuesday in an election amounting to a referendum on Donald Trump’s uniquely brash and bruising presidency, which Democratic opponent and frontrunner Joe Biden urged Americans to end to restore “our democracy.” (Photo by OLIVIER TOURON / AFP) (Photo by OLIVIER TOURON/AFP via Getty Images)

By Mimi Nguyen Ly

Arizona’s governor on Thursday signed into law a bill that aims to strengthen election integrity with new requirements to ensure only U.S. citizens vote in elections held in Arizona.

The measure, House Bill 2492, requires voters in Arizona to provide proof of citizenship and residency to be eligible to vote.

Under the new law, if county recorders are found to have knowingly accepted a voter registration application that doesn’t have enough proof of citizenship, they face a class 6 felony.

“Election integrity means counting every lawful vote and prohibiting any attempt to illegally cast a vote,” Gov. Doug Ducey said in a letter (pdf) to Secretary of State Katie Hobbs explaining his support for the legislation. He said the bill “is a balanced approach that honors Arizona’s history of making voting accessible without sacrificing security in our elections.”

doug ducey
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey speaks at a MAGA campaign rally in Prescott, Ariz., on Oct. 19, 2020. (Caitlin O’Hara/Getty Images)

In Arizona, the Republican Party controls the governorship and both chambers of the state’s legislature. The bill passed the legislature on March 23.

Hobbs, a Democrat who is running for governor of Arizona, told Ducey to veto the bill after lawmakers passed the measure. She said on Twitter on March 23 that the GOP-backed bill “creates new, unnecessary barriers for people registering to vote.”

county elections
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs removes a mask as she speaks to members of Arizona’s Electoral College prior to them casting their votes in Phoenix, Ariz., on Dec. 14, 2020. (Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo)

Other state Democrats say the measure is part of an effort to suppress voting in the battleground state.

State Rep. Jake Hoffman, the bill’s sponsor, said the signing into law of HB 2492 is “a giant step toward ensuring elections are easy, convenient, and secure in our state.”

“HB 2492 is an incredibly well-crafted piece of legislation that is on sound legal footing and broadly supported by voters of all political parties. I am confident that should Democrats challenge HB 2492 in court it will only serve to further reinforce its clear constitutionality,” he said in a statement (pdf) Thursday.

Federal Only Voters

Ducey noted in his letter to Hobbs, “Federal law prohibits non-citizens from voting in federal elections. Arizona law prohibits non-citizens from voting for all state and local offices, and requires proof of citizenship. H.B. 2492 provides clarity to Arizona law on how officials process federal form voter registration applications that lack evidence of citizenship.”

The Supreme Court ruled in 2013 (pdf) that Arizona could continue requiring proof of citizenship in its state elections, but must accept federal forms to register Arizona voters for federal elections.

The federal forms ask voters to state that they are U.S. citizens but don’t require proof of citizenship. These voters, referred to as Federal Only Voters because they are only eligible for casting a vote in federal elections, will now be required under H.B. 2492 to provide proof of citizenship in order to vote in presidential elections or vote by mail. They could still vote in congressional elections at the polls, however.

Ducey said there’s been a growing number of registrants who have used the federal form since 2014. He said 21 voters statewide used that form to register to vote in the primary election in 2014, but by the 2020 general election, there were more than 11,600 federal-only voters in Arizona who voted without providing proof of citizenship.

“In Maricopa County alone, there are currently 13,042 active registered voters who have not provided evidence of citizenship to vote through use of the federal form,” according to Ducey’s office.

Currently, there are about 31,500 federal-only voters in Arizona.

Ducey acknowledged that in 2004, when Arizona passed Proposition 200, which required proof of citizenship to vote, the requirement exempted people who were already registered to vote before the proposition’s passage. Ducey told Hobbs that H.B. 2492 “does not disturb the safe harbor granted to Arizona voters who registered to vote prior to Prop 200’s passage.”

H.B. 2492 also requires that county records check relevant databases to help better maintain voter rolls.

The new law also requires Arizona’s secretary of state and each county recorder to provide the Arizona attorney general details of all people who registered to vote but didn’t give enough proof of citizenship, so the AG has enough information to check whether a person who registered with the federal form is a non-citizen.

Source: The Epoch Times

Author: Mimi Nguyen Ly is a reporter based in Australia covering world news with a focus on U.S. news.

by

Now is the time to look much more closely at The Great Reset, a fake Utopia being sold to us by charlatans | RT.com

By Brandon Heard

As we exit the pandemic, expect to hear much more about The Great Reset and building back better. Far from resulting in a low-carbon dream life, though, it’s a cartoonish fantasy that will hand the global elite even more power.

‘The Great Reset’ is a term that has been bandied about quite readily by most Western neo-liberal politicians. So often, in fact, and without proper explanation, that it strikes the prudent observer as a kind of paid advertisement.

But what is it exactly? The term rose to prominence at the 50th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in June 2020. It was initially launched by the Prince of Wales, before being absorbed into the philosophy of the sartorially dystopian sci-fi villain Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the WEF.

The Great Reset refers to a plan to rebuild the world’s infrastructure ‘in a sustainable way’ following the economic ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic and to establish a global treaty to prevent future pandemics, or as it is described more formally, to “build a more robust international health architecture that will protect future generations.” If you ever hear people talking about “building back better,” they are referring to The Great Reset.

Probably the most disturbing part of The Great Reset is how much it strongly resembles business-as-usual, only with EXTRA globalism. Most of the plan’s outlines include a further weakening of national boundaries and individual national autonomy, in favour of a more ‘universal governance.’ As usual, it is the rapidly vanishing Western middle class which must shoulder this burden, as their freedoms are further curtailed to meet the quotas of corporate-media-fuelled activism.

Regardless, many world leaders, no doubt charmed into acquiescence by Schwab’s commandingly sinister Blofeld-esque wardrobe, agreed to the Great Reset, including Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Mark Rutte, Pedro Sánchez, Erna Solberg and Volodymyr Zelensky. According to John Kerry, Joe Biden’s administration is on board, too.

But the general agreement of the Western leaders is absolutely typical of any agenda which is espoused by NATO, the UN, or the WEF. If an emotionally charged, politically vague and ultimately ineffectual edict or bill is proposed by one of these entities – each resembling a shabby, globe-trotting team of insurance salesmen – our effete politicians line up to show the most fervent compliance.

As a rule, it seems their solutions to specific environmental or scientific problems mysteriously become entwined with LGBTQ+ rights, workplace equity, open borders initiatives and other unrelated social justice causes. It’s as though any goals they have are somehow unilaterally from the same source, or entail the same solution, regardless of causality or consequence. Therefore, a united response to a global pandemic mysteriously also equals trans rights activism.

In their own words, “No single government or multilateral agency can address this (pandemic) threat alone. Together, we must be better prepared to predict, prevent, detect, assess and effectively respond to pandemics in a highly co-ordinated fashion.” 

There are many other sweeping sentiments expressed by Schwab and his acolytes which can seem either trite or threatening. Consider “the gulf between what markets value and what people value will close” and “we want more attention paid to scientific experts. No one can “self-isolate” from climate change so we all need to “act in advance and in solidarity.” There is much talk of the pursuit of “fairer and equitable outcomes.” 

International treaties always tend to be about concentrating power. It’s one of those rules of life, for realists, as there is no escaping power dynamics in human affairs. Real problems don’t often have feel-good solutions. Often, they require ‘solutions that sound mean’, that don’t sound good on a corporate goals bulletin. Initiatives like The Great Reset all entail the gradual loss of the autonomy of individual nations, as their decision-making power is transferred to an international, disembodied rule-maker.

It has been, without a doubt, a globalist fantasy for a long time, but the key question is: do they realise what they are doing or not?

As far as their amazing coordinated pandemic response goes, this appears to be nothing more than forced world-wide vaccinations for EVERYBODY. According to Klaus Schwab himself: “As long as not everybody is vaccinated, nobody will be safe.” To which the attendant neo-liberal world leaders nodded in re-affirming unison, repeating in unison their mantra: “Global public good.”

Schwab, despite appearing like an immortal brothel-keeper at Kublai Khan’s Xanadu, is really cut from the same cloth as your typical EU technocrat. His ideas are not creative, they are quite staid and pedestrian, and research of his career shows they have been unchanged since the 1970s. He has consistently been preaching the very same thing, like a broken record.

Schwab believes we can achieve environmental solutions without altering capitalism in the slightest, by creating treaties of “mutual accountability and shared responsibility, transparency and co-operation within the international system.” His idea involves ‘ethical capitalism’ – where the excesses of capitalism will somehow be held at bay by ‘ethical stakeholders,’ to whom the corporations will be held accountable, while (conveniently) the elites and systems already in place will continue as they are. This is the master plan of the World Economic Forum, largely unchanged for 40 years.

The result? A green technocracy, one assumes, with a WEF-mandated ‘ethical stakeholder’ apparatus, a worldwide spiderweb organisation ruling by the threatened fears of pandemic and carbon doom. No section of society would be exempt from edicts of ‘the new treaty.’

The Great Reset website appears to be little more than an advertisement for modern pod-living. It seems to style itself as a low-carbon dream-life (without loss of modern convenience) to effeminate hipsters. One can see slovenly-looking neo-liberal youths, frequent references to LGBTQ+ values, and an overall urgency about carbon footprints.

There is a hint of Adbusters about the website, creator of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Despite the fact that the WEF and Davos and all associated entities are entirely elite institutions, the website styles itself on grassroots urban activism. There is much cringeworthy symbology in its white papers, such as a green and rainbow flag-combination with fey slogans like ‘we salute you, zoom queen!’

Schwab refers to the aim of The Great Reset as “the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” with the first being powered by water and steam, the second introducing mass production, and the third electronic automation. The fourth will blur the lines between “physical, digital and biological spheres.” 

In this grab-bag of magical advances, he lists, “fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage and quantum computing.” 

This sounds like cartoonish optimism, as many of these technologies are anything but clean and don’t seem to de facto relate to side-stepping out of industrialism or anything else. On top of that, fewer than 9% of companies use the machine learning, robotics, touch screens and other advanced technologies listed as somehow ‘changing everything.’ Stakeholder capitalism, as a concept, does not explain itself as foolproof, and will no doubt be freely interpreted by the likes of Silicon Valley or supply chain conglomerates.

The jewel in the crown of Great Reset optimism has to be the belief that the advent of AI will alter everything positively, again without specifics, to somehow create a low-carbon new world.

It appears at best to be all be smoke and mirrors, a childish corporate fantasy manufactured by isolated bean counters. At worst, it is an intentional power-grab by unaccountable international agencies and hidden oligarchs.

Either way, it is a fake utopia at the price of privacy and autonomy, sold to us by used-car salesmen who think they are princes. 

Source: RT.com