June 7, 2022 at 07:07AM Report: Trump Toying With Declaring Campaign For President Early
We are getting closer and closer to 45th President Donald Trump running for President in 2024.
A new report is claiming that President Donald Trump is considering declaring he will run for President in 2024 early.
Former President Donald Trump has been thinking about declaring a 2024 presidential bid early, according to NBC News.
While the consensus in GOP circles has been that Trump would hold off on annoucing any formal decision until after the 2022 midterm elections in November, some advisors told NBC that may be shifting.
Jason Miller, the CEO of Gettr and a former top Trump White House aide, explained why an early announcement could be advantageous for the former president.
“I’ve laid out my case on why I think he should do it,” Miller told NBC. “I think that there being clarity about what his intentions are [is important] so he can start building that operation while it’s still fresh in people’s minds and they’re still active — a lot of that can be converted into 2024 action.”
It could be as early as July 4th:
One question is “whether he can sort of suppress his excitement about a 2024 rematch and not, say, go ahead and put that statement out … and waits for a big event, a big speech to do it,” the second adviser said. “A betting person says he’s doing it, and he also wants to crowd out the rest of the field.”
Two people in Trump’s orbit told NBC News they had been asked informally to hold July 4 as a date for a possible announcement, but Miller — noting that Trump hasn’t yet decided to run — said it is “not true” that the day has been reserved, even unofficially, for a launch.
Without specifically addressing the question of timing, Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said in a text exchange with NBC News that he sees growing public appetite for a Trump comeback.
“America was strong, prosperous and greatly respected under President Trump, and that’s why he continues to have unprecedented strength through his endorsement record and the demand for his leadership has never been higher,” Budowich said.
via ThePalmieriReport
Biden Administration Declare National Emergency for Clean Energy Production, Invokes Defense Production Act to Facilitate Faster Transformation of Energy Economy Away from Fossil Fuels – The Last Refuge
https://ift.tt/3YBUu84
Earlier today, Joe Biden, working toward the agenda of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Wall Street multinationals, and the radical climate change activists within the far left of the socialist democrat party, declared a national emergency around the issue of U.S. energy prices and policies. [SEE HERE]
On the front side of the justification, the people in control of the Biden administration, claim that current and future increases in energy prices are likely to do severe damage to the economy and the lives of all Americans. However, in the background of the issue, this is the ‘never let a crisis go to waste’ phase of an energy crisis the administration has intentionally created.
The real goal is to fundamentally transform the foundation of the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels and into a new era of clean renewable energy. This is what all of the Biden cabinet officers now refer to as the “economic transition” phase.
Joe Biden’s executive announcement today is the triggering of increased federal government control over the United States energy system.
Ideological government intervention, completely disconnected from the free market, is facilitated by the declaration of a federal national emergency:
[WHITE HOUSE] – Today, President Biden is authorizing the use of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to accelerate domestic production of clean energy technologies – unlocking new powers to meet this moment. Specifically, the President is authorizing the Department of Energy to use the DPA to rapidly expand American manufacturing of five critical clean energy technologies:
In deploying the DPA, the Biden-Harris Administration will strongly encourage the use of strong labor standards, including project labor agreements and community benefits agreements that offer wages at or above the prevailing rate and include local hire provisions. The Administration also will strongly encourage projects with environmental justice outcomes that empower the clean energy transition in low-income communities historically overburdened by legacy pollution.
Following this announcement, the White House and the Department of Energy will convene relevant industry, labor, environmental justice, and other key stakeholders as we maximize the impact of the DPA tools made available by President Biden’s actions and strengthen domestic clean energy manufacturing. (more)
The Biden administration then immediately triggered the Defense Production Act for the U.S. government to: (a) suspend tarrifs; and (b) take control over procurement for all key components needed in the transition from fossil fuel to solar energy. The products will come from Southeast Asia as the main hub of solar equipment is not located within the United States. DPA Excerpt:
[…] exported from the Kingdom of Cambodia, Malaysia, the Kingdom of Thailand, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and that are not already subject to an antidumping or countervailing duty order as of the date of this proclamation, and to temporarily extend during the course of the emergency the time therein prescribed for the performance of any act related to such imports. (read more)
The DPA emergency authorities have been given to the Dept of Commerce and the people working under Commerce Secretary Gina M. Raimondo, the former governor of Rhode Island. Each of the DPA’s released today targets specific components of the solar industry [SOURCE LINK].
Obviously, this massive shift in the governmental takeover of energy development is part of facilitating the aforementioned “Green New Deal.” The approach follows a pattern that is transparent for those who are capable of accepting things as they are, not as we would wish them to be.
Joe Biden shut down domestic energy development, cancelled pipelines, cancelled leases, retracted the ability to drill in ANWAR (Alaska), and triggered massive new regulatory approaches from the Commerce, Interior and Energy departments. The resulting increases in oil, natural gas, gasoline, electricity and energy costs overall – which became fuel on the furnace of inflation, have now created the energy crisis that Joe Biden is declaring a national emergency to solve.
Biden himself has no idea what is happening; he is simply following the instructions of the policy operators who are in control of the administration. It is the people in the circles of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and the climate change activists within the DC bureaucracy that are executing the nuts-and-bolts shifts. They tell Biden what to do, and he cluelessly does it. We are the people who end up paying the price for their effort.
It would appear the primary goal is to push everything as fast as possible beyond an infrastructure threshold that could be reversed if/when the radicals are rebuked by the victims, us.
The democrat-socialists are ‘all-in‘ on this economic kamikaze mission.
The radicals took off on inauguration day with a nuclear economic device and only enough fuel for a one-way trip. They are nearing their destination.
Additionally, using the anniversary of June 6, 1944, is not coincidental. These sickos and ideologues sit around worshipping sustainable algae cakes and giggling about this stuff.
Posted in Big Government, Big Stupid Government, Climate Change, Communist, Conspiracy ?, Decepticons, Deep State, Dem Hypocrisy, Economy, energy, Fabian Socialists – Modern Progressives, Joe Biden, Legislation, media bias, Notorious Liars, Occupy Type Moonbats, Professional Idiots, propaganda, Socialist, Transportation, Typical Prog Behavior, Uncategorized,
via The Last Refuge
June 7, 2022 at 04:29AM
May 21, 2022 at 12:23PM Photo alleged to show Hunter Biden’s laptop surfaces with questions about a strange journey
A team led by Kevin Morris, an entertainment lawyer best known for crafting a 9-figure deal for the creators of the animated series “South Park,” has been probing the backstory of how another Hunter Biden laptop containing what appear to be years of personal and intimate emails and business records found its way to news reporters and authorities. The effort appears to be aimed at blunting the impact of an ongoing federal investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax records and business dealings by sowing doubts about that computer, which made headlines in 2020.
A source from Hunter Biden’s team of advisers told CBS News the laptop now in their possession may be the key to determining if anything was altered or added to that second laptop discovered at a Delaware repair shop — or to the other hard drives that have journeyed through multiple sets of hands,
“We have the Rosetta Stone,” the adviser said.
“They can send us theirs and we’ll see what they have,” the adviser said, referring to news outlets and various critics of Hunter Biden who have copies of the laptop contents that first went public in the New York Post during the 2020 presidential campaign. “They should be the ones with the burden of proof in this nasty circus.”
Hunter Biden’s team has produced no evidence of alterations to the drives that have leaked.
Several news outlets, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, have reported in recent months that they have authenticated some of the files and correspondence contained on the laptop that made news in 2020. Hunter Biden is believed to have owned more than one laptop, and a Washington Post analysis raised questions about whether Hunter Biden may have had multiple computers. There is also the possibility that multiple laptops used by Hunter Biden could have contained different data or files.
The president’s son has been the focus of a long-running federal investigation into his finances, a probe that has involved the subpoena of financial records from a range of his past associates.
The legal team assembled by Morris has focused its energy less on the contents of the laptop than on where the infamous laptop has been.
What’s known about the chain of custody of the laptop in the photograph shared by Hunter Biden’s lawyer begins in February 2019, when Hunter Biden left it at the Boston office of a therapist he was seeing. The laptop was in the Newburyport, Massachusetts, office of Dr. Keith Ablow, when the office was raided by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, an action unrelated to Biden. But his laptop was also taken by the DEA. A source close to Ablow confirmed this to CBS News and said Ablow then sought to have the laptop returned to Hunter Biden.
No charges have been filed against Ablow in connection with the raid.
According to documents reviewed by CBS News, it was a year later that a lawyer for Biden began working with the U.S. attorney’s office to negotiate that laptop’s return. Biden’s legal team provided CBS News with documentation showing the laptop was returned to Biden’s attorney on March 20, 2020.
It was just a few weeks later that the owner of a Delaware computer repair shop, John Paul Mac Isaac, said Hunter Biden sought his help in repairing what Biden’s lawyers say is a different laptop, but never came back to retrieve it. In a book excerpt published in the New York Post, he described how he had seen some of its contents and determined the material needed to be shared with authorities. In a later legal case, Mac Isaac said he had turned over the computer to the FBI, and he also provided a copy of its contents to a representative of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
In a two-hour interview with CBS News soon after the story broke, Mac Isaac noted that his vision was impaired, and he never had a clear look at the person dropping off the laptop. At the time, he had difficulty answering key questions about how the laptop ended up in his store, and he contradicted himself about his motivations in turning over the drive.
Hunter Biden’s legal team is alleging that whatever device Mac Isaac turned over to the FBI, it was not the one Hunter Biden left behind at Ablow’s office.
In the closing weeks of the campaign, the contents of the laptop from the Delaware shop — alleged by the New York Post to be Hunter Biden’s emails and photos — became a centerpiece of Donald Trump’s political attacks against his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden. Controversy surrounding the laptop grew as the Biden camp tried to cast doubt on its authenticity, even as several major news outlets confirmed that some files on the hard drive were real.
Hunter Biden has never given a clear answer to the question of whether he dropped a computer off at the Delaware shop for repairs. In 2021, Hunter Biden told CBS News he “really” didn’t know if the laptop left at the repair shop was his. “It could be that I was hacked,” he said. “It could be that it was Russian intelligence. It could be that it was stolen from me.”
via CBS News
May 19, 2022 at 01:12PM House passes domestic terrorism bill following mass shooting in Buffalo
The House passed a bill late Wednesday that will enhance federal resources to prevent domestic terrorism in response to the racially-motivated mass shooting that killed 10 in Buffalo over the weekend.
The legislation was passed in the Democrat-controlled chamber along a near party-line vote (222-203). Retiring Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger was the sole Republican to vote for the measure.
The bill is primarily a response to the pressure Congress is facing to address gun violence and white supremacist attacks. But it is not the first time the House has passed such a measure only to have it go nowhere in the Senate.
Democrats in the upper chamber do not have the votes to pass any type of meaningful gun-control legislation, so Democratic lawmakers have channeled their energy into a bill that focuses more broadly on domestic terrorism.
Illinois Democrat Rep. Brad Schneider, the bill sponsor, cast the blame for such violence on what he considers far-right ideology put forth by such thought leaders as the Fox New Channel’s opinion show host Tucker Carlson.
“We in Congress can’t stop the likes of Tucker Carlson from spewing hateful, dangerous replacement theory ideology across the airwaves. Congress hasn’t been able to ban the sale of assault weapons,” the Illinois lawmaker said on the House floor. “The Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act is what Congress can do this week to try to prevent future Buffalo shootings.”
Schneider first introduced the bill in 2017.
Sen. Dick Durbin, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, is sponsoring a twin bill in the chamber.
“As we took 9/11 seriously, we need to take this seriously,” the Illinois lawmaker said. “This is a domestic form of the same terrorism that killed the innocent people of New York City and now this assault in Buffalo and many other places.”
Supporters the bills believe they will help the intelligence-sharing efforts among the FBI and the Justice and Homeland Security department so that authorities will better be able to understand and respond to threats of racially motivated attacks across the country.
The legislation would require each agency to open offices specifically focused on domestic terrorism and to create an interagency task force to address the infiltration of white supremacy in the U.S. military.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would cost taxpayers roughly $105 million over five years.
Police have charge a The shooting in Buffalo, New York, resulted in the death of 10 people – all of them black. Police have charged in connection with the attack an 18-year-old white man who drove several hours to carry out the attack, which he live streamed.
via Just The News
May 16, 2022 at 05:14PM (TB092) Busted: Biden’s “Minster of Truth” Nina Jankowicz Participated in Secret NATO-Funded Cabal to Subvert Western Democracies Using Disinformation as Cover
As Revolver and others have covered, Nina “Moaning Myrtle” Jankowicz is a joke. The Harry Potter superfan-turned-propagandrix is now the Biden Administration’s chosen head for the “Disinformation Governance Board.” Among many other embarrassing videos in circulation is the following clip of Nina Jankowicz bizarrely and emphatically dismissing the notion of the so-called “deep state.”
For those who can’t stand uptalk, here’s what she said in the video:
Talking about the deep state and things like that which is a thread among conspiracy communities here in the United States, that there is this secret cabal here in Washington working to undermine the American people couldn’t be further from the truth, as someone who works with and around these public servants every day.
Whatever one thinks of the precise term “deep state,” Nina badly wants everyone to dismiss the very concept of secret groups operating within Washington. She works “with and around” them after all, and she says such a cabal or network of cabals does not exist.
In fact, Nina does know the truth, and it’s the opposite of what she claims above. Nina’s name appeared in one of the most explosive and aggressively censored national security leaks of the century. The leak in question exposed the “Integrity Initiative,” a dark government-funded NGO that appears to have engaged in political meddling and covert influence operations in Western countries under the guise of fighting “disinformation.”
Founded in mid-2015 under the auspices of the U.K. government-funded NGO “Institute for Statecraft,” the Integrity Initiative boasted a precociously fashionable motto: “Defending Democracy Against Disinformation.”
The Integrity Initiative “defended democracy” by recruiting secretive “clusters” of academics, national security bureaucrats, journalists, think tankers, and lobbyists in multiple European countries. These clusters would then be engaged in various ways to address nation-specific threats of so-called “Russian disinformation.”
In its organization, funding, operation, structure, and rhetoric the Integrity Initiative is the single best template for understanding how the entire hornets’ nest of NGOs, journalists, and “national security” bureaucrats work secretly and in concert to wage psychological warfare against citizens of the West. One cannot understand how the Disinformation Industry functions without understanding the little-known (and now defunct) Integrity Initiative.
Thankfully, before its demise, hackers leaked a huge swath of internal documents from the Integrity Initiative. More on that leak in a moment, but for now, here is an official description of the “clusters” from one of those leaked documents:
Full text transcribed here for readability (emphasis ours):
The network of networks:
The Integrity Initiative was set up in autumn 2015 by the Institute for Statecraft in cooperation with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) to bring to the attention of politicians, policy-makers, opinion leaders and other interested parties the threat posed by Russia to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom, across Europe and North America
The Integrity Initiative Aims to unite people who understand the threat, in order to provide a coordinated Western response to Russian disinformation and other elements of hybrid warfare.
The nature of this response needs to render counter productive the Russian tactic of dividing countries internally and from one another. This will be the case if each Russian information and influence attack provokes the country targeted into sharing analysis of the attack with other countries in the network on a governmental basis, thereby increasing collaboration and Alliance cohesion. NATO’s political Committee can play an important role here.
An effective network is best achieved by forming in each European country a cluster of well-informed people from the political, military, academic, journalistic and think-tank spheres, who will track and analyze examples of disinformation in their country and inform decision-makers and other interested parties about what is happening.
Nina Jankowicz’s name appears in a 2018 leak as a member of the “inner core” of the Integrity Initiative’s U.K. Cluster, specifically in the sub-group dedicated to Russia.
Another name that appears alongside Nina Jankowicz’s in the leaked documents as a member of the “inner core” of the U.K. cluster dealing with Russia is Anne Applebaum. Revolver briefly touched upon Applebaum’s apparent involvement in the Integrity Initiative in an earlier piece.
Read More: Dark New Dem Bill Uses “Counter American Intelligence” To Wage War on MAGA
Applebaum was last seen refusing to comment on the coordinated cover-up of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Applebaum’s apparent fellow “inner core” cluster wingman Nina Jankowicz repeatedly amplified the U.S. intelligence community’s discredited claim that the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian disinformation operation:
From the Integrity Initiative’s formal description of “clusters” above it is somewhat difficult to infer what sort of activity Nina Jankowicz may have been involved in. But as luck would have it, the leaks included documents describing the activity of the Integrity Initiative’s Spanish cluster.
In 2018, Spain’s ruling party attempted to appoint Pedro Baños as head of the country’s national security department. The Integrity Initiative’s Spanish cluster as well as several U.K. associates immediately leapt into action to sabotage the appointment of this allegedly “pro-Kremlin” official. The following document from the leaks details their efforts:
Transcript (emphasis ours):
Midday: (II) Integrity Initiative Spanish cluster hear that a well known pro-Kremlin voice Pedro Baños is to be appointed as Director of the National Security Department, which works closely with the Spanish PMs office (La Moncloa) and is very influential in shaping policy
14:00: Spanish cluster leader alerts other cluster members and prepares a dossier to inform the main Spanish media. The cluster starts a campaign on Twitter to try to prevent the appointment.
15:45: Spanish cluster leader alerts Integrity Initiative UK Team which activates the Integrity Initiative network to generate international support for the Twitter campaign
UK team creates a WhatsApp group to coordinate the Twitter response, get contacts on Twitter to spread awareness and get people retweeting the material. Publishes opinion piece by Nico de Pedro on StopFake’s Spanish website, which was also retweeted by key influencers.
Cluster send material to El Pais and El Mundo to publish and alert contacts at UK and French Embassies.
Outcome
By 19:45 Spanish Cluster assesses that the campaign has generated significant noise on Twitter. Contacts in the Socialist Party confirm that the PM has received the message. Some Spanish diplomats also express concerns
The result of the Integrity Initiative’s campaign was swift and decisive. After a week of lobbying, then-Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez named a different man to the post.
Despite ostensibly “defending democracy against disinformation,” the Integrity Initiative’s clusters operated in the shadows to interfere with yet another political event in Spain. Consider the following from a leaked Integrity Initiative “Progress Report:
Integrity Spain
Our first cluster, set up in January 2017, is headed by an academic currently at CIDOB, a Barcelona-based think tank. The inaugural seminar was co-sponsored by HQ NATO and addressed Russian malign influence in Eastern Europe and North Africa. A second inaugural session was held soon thereafter at the ECFR think tank in Madrid to ensure a balanced national coverage. This clusters draws it participants from academia, the media, civil servants and military and several political parties. Its main means of influence is through academic papers and especially through articles, written by independent journalists in newspapers like El Pais, based on material provided anonymously by the cluster. This cluster produced a major study on Russian influence in the Catalan referendum process which was circulated privately to key influencers in Spain, including the PM’s office, and throughout Europe on the Integrity Initiative network.
Just like with the Baños incident, the government-backed Integrity Initiative injected itself into a political matter — this time the Catalan independence movement.
A couple things are especially noteworthy about the operations described above.
First, we note the sinister irony that the NATO-funded Integrity Initiative, whose ostensible purpose is to “Defend Democracy Against Disinformation,” was caught red-handed conducting a secretive influence operation to meddle in the internal politics of Spain, a democratic NATO member.
Second, we note how crucial — indeed, indispensable — the social media platform Twitter was to the influence operations in question. It is precisely the importance of Twitter as a theater for U.S., U.K., and NATO backed psychological influence operations that informed our analysis of Elon Musk’s attempt to purchase the platform. We weren’t exaggerating when we described Elon’s threat to allow free speech and transparency on Twitter as a “declaration of war” against the Regime. As the Integrity Initiative’s use of the platform shows, Twitter’s value to U.S.-aligned intelligence agencies as a friendly ground for influence operations far exceeds its nominal value as a technology company.
Read More: The Battle of the Century: Here’s What Happens if Elon Musk Buys Twitter
Throughout this article so far, we have repeatedly referred to the Integrity Initiative as “state-funded.” This isn’t idle speculation. The Integrity Initiative took pains to mask the nature of its operations. Its listed address was in Scotland, despite actually operating in London. The Integrity Initiative’s funding came from a Scotland-based non-profit, the Institute for Statecraft, of which it operated under as a subsidiary. The Institute for Statecraft presents itself as an independent organization with a wide array of backers, but in reality the vast majority of its funding comes from the U.K. government. In its 2018-2019 fiscal year (running March 2018-March 2019), the Institute reported 2.2 million pounds in income.
How much money did the Institute for Statecraft receive from the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) in that time? 2.2 million pounds! By the way, at the same time, the FCO oversaw both the GCHQ (Britain’s equivalent of the NSA) and MI6 (its equivalent of the CIA).
As venture capitalist Marc Andreessen once asked:
The answer, it turns out, is you, the American taxpayer. Besides receiving funds from the British FCO, the Integrity Initiative also received funds directly from NATO, aka the U.S. taxpayer, in addition to funds from the United States State Department.
Funding wasn’t exclusively government-based, though, because in a fitting symbol of the growing tether between Big Tech and the security state, the Institute did receive a small chunk of money from Facebook, as the above document shows.
Perhaps more ominous than the fact that Facebook funded the Integrity Initiative is the fact that the name Ben Nimmo appears as an apparent member of the Integrity Initiative’s UK Cluster, right there with Nina Jankowicz (see Ben’s name the third from the top in the UK Inner Core Russia cluster).
At the time of the leak, Ben Nimmo worked for a group called the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab). The DFRLab is a subsidiary of the Atlantic Council, an NGO which is also funded by the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, NATO, and the State Department. The group brags that it has “operationalized the study of disinformation by exposing falsehoods and fake news.” You know what that means: Nimmo and DFR have become notorious for accusing all sorts of journalists and even random civilians of being “Russian bots.”
The Integrity Initiative’s leaked handbook identified Ben Nimmo’s DFR Lab, along with Buzzfeed and a handful of other organizations, as friendly outlets to rely upon when conducting its influence operations.
What is Ben Nimmo’s current position? If you guessed that Ben Nimmo now works at Facebook and helps to lead Facebook’s global threat intelligence strategy against influence operations, you’d be correct.
You simply can’t make this stuff up!
Ben Nimmo, “Disinformation Expert”
Nimmo is no stranger to Revolver, and we encourage readers to consult our previous work on Nimmo, the Integrity Initiative, and the disinformation industry here:
Read More: NYT Hit Piece On “Vaccine Cartoon” Backfires and Reveals Plot For New “Russia Disinformation” Scam
The picture that emerges so far is as disturbing as it is undeniable. The Integrity Initiative was a secret, government-funded influence operation that engaged secret “clusters” of journalists and academics to coordinate in order to meddle in the political process of Western democracies under the guise of combating “disinformation” and “defending democracy.”
Not only was the Integrity Initiative funded by national security bureaucracies, it conducted itself in precisely the same surreptitious manner one would typically associate with the world of spooks and espionage. One leaked document advises its reader on how to go about recruiting people for a cluster. It reads far more like an intelligence document than a journalism-related one.
“Be absolutely sure… we can trust them before we talk to them” is a baffling line for a group whose only purpose is to correct “disinformation.” Politifact and Snopes may or may not produce good “fact check” reporting, but we highly doubt they fret about being able to “trust” whomever they share their work with.
But this obsession with trust is quite understandable for a group whose actual purpose is manipulating the public, rather than informing them.
Even more telling are the lines about funding. “Always be firmly vague and helpfully uninformative” about funneling money to cluster members. On the other hand, “be very clear” about the “multiple sources” of funding for the Integrity Initiative, which just happen to include the British government and “international organizations.”
This sense that one is reading an intelligence report also permeates the group’s progress reports. Read the quotes below and ask yourself: Does this sound like a journalism operation, or an intelligence one?
Integrity Italy
The newly-formed Italian cluster is headed by an Italian professor who is also linked to the Italian Atlantic Committee. He and his colleagues have recently produced a study on Russian influence in and around the recent elections in Italy and are currently working on a study to explain the vulnerability of Italy to Russian influence. The main means of dissemination of information is through individuals in academic positions and through a series of Atlantic clubs – International affairs discussion groups in several cities across Italy. The sensitivities of the political situation in Italy, and the extent of Russian influence in political parties, means that the cluster must develop cautiously, feeling its way and seeking the best means of having a positive impact.
Integrity Greece
Greece is an especially sensitive country in which to operate, given its current political and economic challenges.
…
The Athens group is comprised of journalists who operate very discreetly and whose main means of dissemination is articles and a website.
Armenia
Following the popular, quiet “revolution” in Armenia, we are exploring how we might safely establish an Integrity Armenia. One of the Institute’s Associates who is of Armenian origin is acting as informal adviser to the new PM, MFA and NSA. He is investigating the possibilities, including a journalist friend as a likely cluster leader. The delicate political situation requires that this be done with the utmost caution.
Czech Republic
As the Czech Republic is well served by the European Values think tank, we have not so far seen the need to establish a cluster there, but have found it more cost-effective to link with this organisation and support its activities. However, given the recent political trajectory of Czech politics, it may become necessary to review this decision in due course.
The “political trajectory” in the Czech Republic, by the way, is the 2018 re-election of anti-immigration president Milos Zeman, who sometimes praised Vladimir Putin, supported Donald Trump’s rise in the U.S., and shared Trump’s aversion to journalists. Far from simply worrying about specific Russian lies reaching the West, the Integrity Initiative is really just worried about wider political developments it vaguely classifies as “pro-Russian.” What this amounts to is meddling domestically in Western democracy’s politics under the guise of combatting disinformation.
If there were any doubt as to the ulterior and disingenuous use of the term “disinformation” for political purposes, we need to look no further than the Integrity Initiative’s own “Guide to Countering Russian Disinformation.” The guide shrieks about the “lies” of the Trump Administration in a tone scarcely different from the most deranged New York Times article. Before saying anything about Russian disinformation at all, the handbook introduces the concept of disinformation with reference to two petty pseudo-fact checks in relation to Donald Trump.
The Integrity Initiative becomes even more suspicious when one looks at how its organizers reacted when hackers brought attention to their work. The Integrity Initiative leaks began on November 5, 2018 and were published on an Anonymous-linked hacker site called Cyberguerilla. The original Cyberguerilla website is now defunct, and our reporting has cross-referenced all documents to downloadable versions of the original leaks available on the archived version of the Cyberguerilla website.
Before the 2018 document leaks, the Institute for Statecraft “think tank” kept a bland website, hosting a handful of sponsored papers and similar work. But shortly after the Anonymous documents leaked, the Institute took down everything, leaving up only a placeholder with a contact form and a notice that it was “temporarily” removing its information “pending an investigation.” And so it has remained for the past three years.
Visitors are invited to visit the Institute’s Facebook (defunct) and its Twitter page (inactive since 2019, with all pre-2019 tweets deleted). Yet despite all appearance of being defunct, it isn’t, as it continues to provide information to Scotland’s charity ministry. Despite supposedly being wholly innocent and aboveboard, both the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statecraft have, for all intents and purposes, closed up shop ever since hackers brought attention to their work and Western governments’ support for it.
We at Revolver were struck by how relatively inaccessible the Integrity Initiative documents were, and equally struck with the near total absence of mainstream reporting on what should be the equivalent of the Snowden leaks for the age of “disinformation.” Depressingly, the right seems to have almost totally ignored the story. Instead, coverage of the Integrity Initiative has been largely confined to marginalized (though often high-quality) outlets like The Grayzone, which do great work critiquing the national security state from a left-leaning perspective. We encourage readers to consult existing outside coverage of the Integrity Initiative leaks here and here.
Very little of this, you’ll notice, has dealt with whatever Nina Jankowicz actually did for the Integrity Initiative. This demonstrates an important point: Nina Jankowicz is in fact neither remarkable nor particularly important. She is simply one small cog in a vast machine.
The man in charge of the Institute for Statecraft, and by extension the Integrity Initiative, actually wrote an entire paper suggesting how this machine operates. Before founding the Institute for Statecraft, Chris Donnelly spent 12 years as an advisor to four consecutive NATO secretary generals. In a private memo, written for members of the British foreign office and leaked along with other Integrity Initiative materials, Donnelly describes how in a post-Brexit world the British government might consider privatizing its influence efforts.
In the above document, Donnelly recognizes the notion that a great degree of government work could be contracted to the private sector, which is allegedly more adaptable to the “speed of global change” — and, more importantly, lacks the full range of “accountability” attached to public servants. It is particularly important for government operatives to avoid accountability when it comes to free speech and censorship issues. An early 2020 article from the Atlantic noted in particular how constitutional constraints like the First Amendment have caused most of America’s censorship apparatus to be outsourced to the private sector (empashis ours):
As surprising as it may sound, digital surveillance and speech control in the United States already show many similarities to what one finds in authoritarian states such as China. Constitutional and cultural differences mean that the private sector, rather than the federal and state governments, currently takes the lead in these practices, which further values and address threats different from those in China. But the trend toward greater surveillance and speech control here, and toward the growing involvement of government, is undeniable and likely inexorable.
As the leaks above show, organizations like the Integrity Initiative are not exactly “private sector” either, at least in the traditional understanding of the term. As state funded organizations accomplishing state funded “national security” goals, groups like the Integrity Initiative are better thought of as extensions of the security state that have evolved to operate with less accountability. Nina Jankowicz’ own evolution as an apparent member of the Integrity Initiative to the head of a “Disinformation Governance Board” within the Department of Homeland Security attests to the emergence of a public-private revolving door for faithful members of the Disinformation Industry.
In any case, the Integrity Initiative represents the the nature of the modern influence operation. Censorship is far more than just woke employees at Big Tech companies deciding whom to ban and which topics become “trending.” Quietly but also constantly, censorship and narrative control are flowing from the state, taking the form of cutout civil society groups, NGOs, and “networks” that control domestic information under the pretext of preserving national security and fighting “disinformation.” An entire industry– the Disinformation Industry — has emerged to facilitate this process.
Disinformation is part of the Integrity Initiative’s motto for a very good reason. “Disinformation” is the skeleton key of modern domestic propaganda. The regime can now target political movements and specific politicians on the grounds that they are influenced by or in thrall to foreign “disinformation.” Previously purely political questions, like the Brexit movement or Catalan independence or Donald Trump’s reelection, are now assessed as “serving Putin’s agenda.” And now, critically, the coordination of academics, journalists, and public intellectuals to secretly push a regime-backed political line is now justified as the needed counterbalance to “disinformation” narratives.
The Integrity Initiative may be gone, but the Disinformation Industry it helped to birth remains. If Americans want to fight back against censorship and the broader domestic war on terror conducted by their own state security apparatus, it is imperative to understand this Disinformation Industry in full. Strap in — we’re just getting started.
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May 16, 2022 at 04:40AM [TB089] “You Are Being Manipulated by the Algorithm in Ways You Don’t Realize”
Elon Musk shared instructions on Twitter where someone can see how they are being manipulated by Twitter.
Very important to fix your Twitter feed:
1. Tap home button.
2. Tap stars on upper right of screen.
3. Select “Latest tweets”.You are being manipulated by the algorithm in ways you don’t realize.
Easy to switch back & forth to see the difference.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 14, 2022
“Illuminaughty” in Musk’s humor is referring to the Illuminati that many have claimed for years are running the world behind the scenes.
Next Musk shared the following about his first tweet directed at Twitter users who are being manipulated by the social media giant. Musk suggests that these algorithms that put tweets in front of a Twitter user may not be malicious but you may be manipulated by them.
Then Musk shared that there may be bugs in the code which is a reason why Twitter should be open source; this would make the company much more transparent and therefore will increase public trust.
via The Gateway Pundit
May 16, 2022 at 04:35AM [TB090] “What’s Next”: Former Russian President Warns West’s “Self-Harming” Sanctions Mean “Collapse Of US-Centric World”
Following wave after wave of sanctions threats and impositions, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev predicted this week that there would be a number of global consequences.
Medvedev, who is deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, wrote on Telegram that the sanctions could be the spur to a new world order which Moscow has previously said it would welcome.
“As a result [of sanctions], a new security architecture will be created,” he said.
This would highlight, “the weakness of the Westernized concepts of international relations such as ‘order based on rules’,” Medvedev also predicted “the collapse of the idea of an American-centric world.”
In a post titled, “What will happen next, or the world after anti-Russian sanctions (not a forecast at all)“, Medvedev outlined in 10 bullet points how supply chains could collapse, inflation could spike and food and financial crises would ensue.
1. A number of global supply chains of goods will collapse, a major logistical crisis is possible, including the collapse of foreign airlines, which are banned from flying over Russian territory.
2. The energy crisis will intensify in those states that have imposed “shooting in their own feet” sanctions on the supply of Russian energy carriers, further growth in fossil fuel prices will continue, and the development of the digital economy in the world will slow down.
3. A full-fledged international food crisis will come with the prospect of starvation in individual states.
4. A monetary and financial crisis is possible in some countries or communities of countries, associated with the undermining of the stability of a number of national currencies, galloping inflation and the destruction of the legal system for protecting private property.
5. New regional military conflicts will arise in those places where the situation has not been peacefully resolved for many years or the significant interests of major international players are ignored.
6. Terrorists are becoming more active, believing that the attention of Western authorities today is diverted to a showdown with Russia.
7. New epidemics will begin, caused by the rejection of honest international cooperation in the sanitary and epidemiological sphere or by direct facts of the use of biological weapons.
8. There will be a decline in the activities of international institutions that have not been able to prove their effectiveness in the course of settling the situation in Ukraine, such as, for example, the Council of Europe.
9. New international alliances of countries based on pragmatic rather than ideological Anglo-Saxon criteria will be formed.
10. As a result, a new security architecture will be created, in which de facto, and then de jure, the existing realities are recognized:
a) the weakness of Westernized concepts of international relations such as “Order based on rules” and other senseless Western junk;
b) the collapse of the idea of an American-centric world;
c) the presence of interests respected by the world community in those countries that are in an acute stage of conflict with the Western world.
Medvedev’s gloomy picture of the future – a pivot away from the post-Cold War international order – echoes Russian President Putin’s comments right before he invaded Ukraine.
via www.zerohedge.com
May 16, 2022 at 03:54AM (TB091) Bill Gates Says Adults Over 50 Will Probably Have to Get Covid Boosters Every 6 Months… Until We Get Better Vaccines
Why is Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates giving medical advice on national television?
Bill Gates this weekend appeared on CNN and told Anderson Cooper’s audience that people over the age of 50 will probably have to get Covid boosters every 6 months until we get a better vaccine.
“For people over 50 or 60, they’ll probably have to be boosted every 6 months until we get even better vaccines,” Bill Gates said.
Anderson Cooper asked Bill Gates a follow up question on Covid booster shots as if he was interviewing a medical expert.
“I’ve been trying to figure this out for myself – I assume you know the answer to this so I’ll just ask you, when do you get boosted again?” Anderson Cooper asked Bill Gates.
Why doesn’t Anderson Cooper ask his own doctor when he should get another booster shot?
Bill Gates answered the question as if he’s a doctor: “It’ll be safe every six months…they might even make that shorter for people over 60 or 70… so we’re in for ongoing vaccination to stay absolutely safe.”
Bill Gates: For people over 50 or 60, they’ll probably have to get boosted every 6 months until we get even better vaccines; so we’re in for ongoing vaccination to stay absolutely safe… pic.twitter.com/zqHXbCPzkK
— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) May 15, 2022
via The Gateway Pundit
May 11, 2022 at 02:54PM Oath Keepers sharing with January 6 investigators their efforts to find election fraud, communications with Trump allies
(CNN)Top leaders in the Oath Keepers, the far-right extremist group, have been turning over phones and digital files and sitting for interviews with the FBI — and detailing how they worked to benefit Donald Trump’s campaign and communicated with others in the former President’s orbit, according to court records and multiple sources familiar with the federal investigation.
Kellye SoRelle, a lawyer working with the Oath Keepers, told CNN that she has met with the FBI several times and handed over phones.
She declined to say more about what she’s shared with investigators, but her ties to the group have come up in court filings, including a virtual meeting a week after the 2020 presidential election when Oath Keepers talk about heading to Washington, DC, and SoRelle briefs them about the campaign’s legal fight.
“I’ve done interviews. I’ve done everything. I’m helping them,” SoRelle said about her cooperation with investigators. She does not represent any Oath Keepers in their criminal proceedings and has not been charged in the seditious conspiracy case against several members in connection with the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
Investigators also have learned about encrypted messages on the app Signal leading up to January 6, in which the Oath Keepers were messaging high-profile, right-wing political organizers, according to four people familiar with its existence. The Justice Department recently provided records of the chat to defense attorneys in the sedition case, some of the people said.
In court last week, prosecutors also disclosed how the Oath Keepers’ leader Stewart Rhodes called an unnamed person on speakerphone from a hotel suite on the evening of January 6, asking to speak directly to Trump and urging the person to tell Trump to call upon groups like the Oath Keepers to “forcefully oppose the transfer of power.”
Prosecutors have said they expect to bring more charges against people affiliated with extremist groups. Grand jury activity continues apace. And investigators are talking to a wide range of people, including organizers of pro-Trump rallies that preceded the US Capitol attack, while seeking information about attempts to impede the certification of President Joe Biden’s electoral win.
All are signs that the biggest investigation in Justice Department history is expanding beyond the hundreds of alleged rioters and exploring connections with more politically connected players.
“I think it’s self-evident that they are continuing to work their way up the food chain to get to who their grand prize is,” Lee Bright, a defense lawyer for Rhodes, said in an interview, referring to speculation that the Justice Department will eventually target Trump.
Several Trump supporters and operatives also have indicated they are sharing information with prosecutors.
“Stop the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander, who received a grand jury subpoena for information about the pro-Trump rally on January 6, said he would be willing to cooperate and has been responsive to prosecutors’ requests, according to a person familiar with his situation.
Alex Jones, the far-right media figure and conspiracy theorist who spoke at a January 5 pro-Trump rally, has been approached by federal investigators for a meeting, though he hasn’t done one yet, according to his attorney.
The attorney, Federico Andino Reynal, told CNN that Jones is demanding protection from prosecution if he is to talk because he is “suspicious of the government’s motives for seeking an interview given the highly partisan nature of the investigation,” and says he is innocent of any crime.
Jones also was involved in pro-Trump rallies in Washington in November and December in 2020 and received protection from right-wing volunteers while in town. Groups like the Oath Keepers provided security to him, Roger Stone and other prominent pro-Trump rally speakers.
According to the people familiar with the Signal messages that prosecutors have accessed, Jones appeared alongside Roger Stone, a staunch Trump ally and confidant, as well as Alexander and members of the Oath Keepers for what was called a “VIP” chat.
This chat is only one of dozens of Signal threads, with more than 100,000 texts total, related to January 6 from Rhodes’ phone, which has become “key to proving or disproving a conspiracy” case against him, according to recent court filings. It’s not clear if the VIP Signal chat ever expanded beyond discussion of security around the rallies.
Robert Caron, another person who says he helped to investigate election fraud allegations, told CNN he was approached by two FBI agents at a hotel in Toronto in December, then sat down to speak with them about key people connected to efforts to overturn the election. Caron says the agents indicated they were working on the investigation into violence on January 6 and the lead-up to the insurrection.
Caron provided the business card of one of the FBI agents, who referred questions to the bureau’s public information office.
Officials from the FBI and DC US Attorney’s Office have declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.
Caron would not say who tapped him to investigate election fraud claims. Caron says he told the FBI that he had cautioned prominent right-wing figures after the election that he hadn’t found evidence of voting machines flipping votes.
Prosecutors have cited some of the information about the Oath Keepers in court filings as evidence that defendants charged in the conspiracy case engaged in ongoing discussions about how to oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power.
In the case of William Todd Wilson, a leader of the North Carolina chapter of the Oath Keepers who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with investigators last week, prosecutors said in a court filing that he huddled with Rhodes and others in a private suite at a Washington hotel after leaving the Capitol grounds on January 6 and overheard Rhodes on the phone with someone trying to get in touch with Trump.
“This individual denied Rhodes’ request to speak directly with President Trump,” the filing states, without naming the person or indicating if investigators looked into the story further.
Prosecutors also have obtained from an informant a transcript of a GoToMeeting virtual event on November 9, 2020, during which SoRelle, a lawyer from Texas, provided an update to Oath Keepers on legal challenges on behalf of Trump, according to court proceedings. Rhodes also spoke at the meeting.
“So I’ve been in communication,” SoRelle is quoted as saying at the virtual event. “I obviously work the RNC version of it, and then I’m in — I like the Q crowd, they’re kind of fun, and then I’ve been meeting with the Campaign crowd.”
In an interview with CNN, SoRelle disputes that she is the speaker but says she did work with the Trump campaign, describing various “teams” searching for voter fraud. She also said she went to Michigan — a swing state where Joe Biden narrowly won — after the election to collect affidavits about supposed fraud to send to the Trump campaign, with some support from the Republican Party, and that the Oath Keepers protected her in that mission.
A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee said it has no connection to the Oath Keepers or any DOJ investigation into them, and spokespeople for Trump didn’t respond to questions from CNN in recent days.
Federal grand juries have met every day since mid-April in the downtown Washington courthouse, approving indictments related to January 6 nearly every day. Prosecutors assigned to these cases and law enforcement witnesses frequently pop in and out of the confidential proceedings.
As of last week, prosecutors have signed up more than 10 defendants as cooperators against Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys,whose leaders are charged with separate conspiracy allegations. The case against the Oath Keepers has taken several steps forward in recent days, with two new cooperators against Rhodes and others announced in the past week.
Prosecutors, in feeling out potential conspiracy defendants’ willingness to plead guilty, have asked if some would admit there was a plan to “stop the steal” of the election, an apparent reference to the slogan used by pro-Trump rally organizers, one person familiar with talks told CNN.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has publicly professed the investigation would proceed methodically. In most criminal investigations, that often means prosecutors pursue less significant figures to plead guilty and potentially cooperate as they gradually build evidence for higher-profile cases. Garland specifically noted in January that the federal evidence-collection efforts would dig into both physical and digital evidence and money.
“The facts tell us where to go next,”the attorney general said. As the grand juries working through January 6-related cases stay active, some political figures have sought out criminal defense lawyers, in case the DOJ shows interest in them in the future, according to people familiar with the reach-outs.
“There is criminal exposure for any number of people who were part of the organization and planning that were not storming the Capitol,” Doug Jones, the former Democratic senator and US Attorney in Alabama who is now an attorney in private practice in DC and has been closely following the January 6 investigation. “From the very beginning, the Justice Department has been casting a wide net.”
But, he added: “It’s difficult to assess where they are.”
Jones pointed out that believing false election fraud claims is not a crime. Yet there could still be legal jeopardy for those who understood there was no widespread fraud and still wanted to obstruct Congress by spreading false information to Trump supporters.
“You can espouse these crazy theories, but you’ve got to connect the dots to somebody trying to put something into action,” Jones said.
No advisers working with Trump on the election result have been charged with a crime.
At the Justice Department, officials have deliberated internally how to navigate the thorny issues these cases present, including ensuring prosecutors are not targeting Constitutionally protected political speech, according to sources familiar with the matter.
This could become particularly difficult as investigators examine the activities of people associated with political fundraising and events that preceded the violence.
Federal investigators also have sought to bolster the conspiracy cases by drawing connections to violence that occurred at other rallies in the weeks before January 6, according to the sources and court filings. DOJ officials believe that could help prosecutors show there was a pattern of violence, and that the Capitol riot wasn’t just a spontaneous event, sources say.
In December 2020, weeks before the January 6 attack, some of the same extremist groups that participated in the Capitol riot were part of violent clashes with police and counter protesters in Washington during a weekend of rallies to protest the election results. Police said dozens were arrested and four churches vandalized. A November 2020 protest also broke out in violence.
via CNN
