Government
The Looming Reckoning For COVID Tyrants
The Looming Reckoning For COVID Tyrants
Authored by William Sullivan via American Thinker,
Many of the tyrants who promoted the COVID madness…

Authored by William Sullivan via American Thinker,
Many of the tyrants who promoted the COVID madness have been begging for amnesty for some time, and we should only expect that their numbers will grow as more evidence surfaces.
But we should make no mistake -- there needs to be a reckoning in the West when it comes to COVID.
I used to wonder as a child how extreme fanaticism, such as Nazism, could gain footing among any educated population. I am now convinced that the internationally coordinated propaganda campaign around COVID that we all recently witnessed for nearly three years makes the Nazis look like amateurs.
Please don’t take this as a typical “this thing I don’t like is Nazism” kind of comparison, but rather, think honestly about this for a moment. It took decades of propaganda to inflame the German people’s hatred of European Jews such that they’d become second-class citizens unworthy of the simplest of rights, such as dining in a public restaurant, and eventually unworthy of even receiving medical care.
In a matter of only two years in the supposedly free West, we had mass swathes of people (or, at least the appearance of mass swathes of people on social media) openly wishing hardship and death upon their countrymen that simply chose not to inject a new, frantically concocted, unproven drug into their bodies to offset a risk that was and is, for the vast majority of people, scarcely more dangerous than the common cold or flu. Not only did restaurants refuse service to these people as a matter of policy in places like New York City, but these people were fired from their jobs, and hospitals in some places began openly refusing life-saving services to patients if a particular individual had the audacity to not have goosestepped to the local pharmacy for not eins, but swei doses of the new drug.
As with the Nazis, it doesn’t matter whether the majority of the population actually agreed with any of that, or whether the incredible visibility of an endless sea of propaganda posters and pamphlet circulars (the modern equivalent of which is Twitter and Facebook’s algorithmic bias) was just falsely presenting to the public that this was the case. What matters is that the government, media, and corporate powers, in both cases, all acted as one symbiotic organ with a clear purpose and message designed to demonize anyone guilty of wrongthink and punish them for a lack of fealty to the ideological imperative.
The truth has only begun coming to light, and already it has all but buried the COVID narrative as it once stood, though a few remaining werewolves are still demanding that we mask up in supermarkets, and there are a few remaining policies which cling to the madness of the past, such as America’s refusing the top tennis player in the world entry into the country based upon his having not been injected with the COVID cartel’s preferred drug.
But those in charge, particularly those who knowingly misled the public to generate unfounded fear and orchestrated what was arguably the greatest and most widespread policymaking calamity in human history, must be held accountable in the biggest, boldest, and most symbolic manner imaginable to assure the world that this will never happen again in the West.
What we need in order to assure that outcome is something to rival the Nuremberg Trials in scope and sensationalism. Nuremberg was selected as the location for those trials because it was there where annual propaganda rallies were held and the sickness of Nazism began. It was symbolic to have Nazism’s end take place at the site of its beginning.
I’m hopeful that we will one day have the similarly symbolic Milan Trials to prosecute those government officials who orchestrated the lockdowns, school closures, and general human suffering that the West endured after the Lombardy region of Italy, where the city of Milan is located, followed China’s lockdown protocol without the slightest historical precedent suggesting any efficacy of the practice, and the rest of the West simply followed suit (for reasons that the Milan Trials might hopefully reveal).
Though China is likely the primary culprit in unleashing COVID upon the world, and it might be perhaps more appropriate to have these trials in Wuhan, it is difficult to imagine ways in which China's ruling Communist Party can be held to account for their obvious role in all of this, outside of an armed conflict in which we are victorious. The Chinese clearly do not respect the international authority of the United States or other Western powers any more than they respect their own innocent and healthy citizens whom they are willing to incarcerate in their homes en masse by welding the doors to their homes shut, and they are clearly withdrawing from the international dialogue while signaling alliances with the West’s adversaries. This withdrawal may be occurring less dramatically than Japan’s storming away from the League of Nations in 1933 when the League attempted to hold it accountable for invading Manchuria, but efforts to hold China accountable for the Wuhan virus have been similarly met with Chinese disregard.
Here's what is now supported by evidence as the likeliest series of events leading into the Western lockdowns, though only a year ago these would have been the ravings of a conspiracy theorist.
The Chinese government conducted gain-of-function experimentation with bat coronaviruses in an American-funded lab in Wuhan, and this mutated virus either escaped or was purposefully released. The communist Chinese government subsequently locked down areas affected by the outbreak while hiding the actual ravages of the virus and presented to the world the efficacy of lockdowns and the destruction of one’s own national economy in the interest of public health.
That the communist Chinese would do all of this out of desperation in order to jockey for a better economic position on the world stage would have shocked no one, even in early 2020. But, prior to 2020, we in the West imagined ourselves to be citizens of nations freer than that.
That fantasy crumbled in March of 2020, and Milan, Italy, was where it began.
Milan, a city of 1.2 million people, was the European ground zero for COVID lockdowns. On March 8, 2020, the streets were silent in Milan. Residents “woke up [that] Sunday to the news that it had been locked down by the Italian government in a bid to contain the coronavirus outbreak.”
Initially, it was just 16 million supposedly free citizens on lockdown in the Lombardy region of Italy. By March 10, it was expanded to all 60 million Italians, becoming the “first democratic nation since World War II to announce a nationwide lockdown.”
By March 14th, Spain was nationally locked down. By the 17th, so was France. By the 23rd of March, both the U.K. and Germany were under national lockdown. By April 1st, the majority of European countries were under national lockdown. And, as we all know, the United States had already begun instituting localized lockdowns (based upon national guidance) so widely that, by mid-April, 300 million Americans (more than 90%) were living under some form of lockdown.
What too few know, however, is that the West had flung its citizens into liberty-strangling lockdowns far more readily than even Asia, despite the fact that there had never been any modern evidence that such interventions as lockdowns could contain a respiratory viral outbreak.
For example, some very early, more reliable data emerged from South Korea. By March 27, the Center for Strategic International Studies was heralding its response, which included much coordination of health agencies and ample availability of testing, but the term “lockdown” which was being bandied about with increasing regularity in Western media didn’t appear. Indeed, as the West was instituting nationalized lockdowns at breakneck speed, South Korea never did more than issuing national recommendations, much like Sweden did at the time, and as did Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. In fact, few more than a handful of Asian nations had instituted national lockdowns by April 1, 2020. By that same date, more than three in four European nations had indiscriminately locked down their entire nations.
This South Korea data was discussed by Dr. David Katz in the New York Times on March 20 of 2020 as an appeal to not commit to lockdowns in the United States. He recognized that reports from South Korea showed that deaths were “mainly clustered among the elderly, those with significant chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease, and those in both groups.” Prophetically, he warned our nation of the dangers that laid ahead if we remained committed to the lockdown strategy in order to “flatten the curve” as had already, by that time, been prescribed by Dr. Anthony Fauci:
A pivot right now from trying to protect all people to focusing on the most vulnerable remains entirely plausible. With each passing day, however, it becomes more difficult. The path we are on may well lead to uncontained viral contagion and monumental collateral damage to our society and economy.
Indeed, monumental collateral damage has been inflicted upon society and the economy in these past three years, along with the effects of uncontained viral contagion. Thankfully, we’ve reached a point where the former is discussed more commonly than the latter.
Lockdowns have been a disaster on a global scale, but there has never been any convincing evidence to substantiate their efficacy in the first place. The sober, rational people who were saying that at the time were heavily censored by early April 2020, if not erased totally in the interest of promoting preferred digital propaganda of the government, media, and corporate interests.
Why did Western nations commit to this unproven non-pharmaceutical intervention which stole irreplaceable time and experience from our children, destroyed countless small businesses while propping up corporate empires, commanded unprecedented powers for the government while stirring social unrest, and reshaped the balance of power between the citizen and the political class? Why did they silence people who were speaking the truth? Did they mean well and just get it wrong, or was there something more nefarious involved?
We need answers. And we demand justice, which can only come from identifying and adequately punishing those involved. That is the only way to ensure that nothing like the COVID madness we witnessed in 2020-2022 is ever inflicted upon the world again.
Government
As We Sell Off Our Strategic Oil Reserves, Ponder This
As We Sell Off Our Strategic Oil Reserves, Ponder This
Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,
One of Biden’s answers to combating…

Authored by Bruce Wilds via Advancing Time blog,
One of Biden's answers to combating higher gas prices has been to tap into America's oil reserves. While I was never a fan of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) program, it does have a place in our toolbox of weapons. We can use the reserve to keep the country running if outside oil supplies are cut off. Still, considering how out of touch with reality Washington has become, we can only imagine the insane types of services it would deem essential next time an oil shortage occurs.
Sadly, some of these reserves found their way into the export market and ended up in China. We now have proof that the President's son Hunter had a Chinese Communist Party member as his assistant while dealing with the Chinese. Apparently, he played a role in the shipping of American natural gas to China in 2017. It seems the Biden family was promising business associates that they would be rewarded once Biden became president. Biden's actions could be viewed as those of a traitor or at least disqualify him from being President.
The following information was contained in a letter from House Oversight Committee ranking member James Comer, R-Ky. to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen dated Sept. 20.
"The President has not only misled the American public about his past foreign business transactions, but he also failed to disclose that he played a critical role in arranging a business deal to sell American natural resources to the Chinese while planning to run for President.”
Joe Biden, Comer said, was a business partner in the arrangement and had office space to work on the deal, and a firm he managed received millions from his Chinese partners ahead of the anticipated venture. While part of what Comer stated had previously been reported in the news, the letter, cited whistleblower testimonies, as well as emails, a corporate PowerPoint presentation, and a screenshot of encrypted messages. These as well as bank documents that committee Republicans obtained suggest Biden’s knowledge and involvement in the plan dated back to at least 2017.
The big point here is;
- The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which was established in 1975 due to the 1973 oil embargo, is now at its lowest level since December 1983.
In December 1975, with memories of gas lines fresh on the minds of Americans following the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, Congress established the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). It was designed “to reduce the impact of severe energy supply interruptions.” What are the implications of depleting the SPR and is it still important?
The U.S. government began to fill the reserve and it hit its high point in 2010 at around 726.6 million barrels. Since December 1984, this is the first time the level has been lower than 450 million barrels. Draining the SPR has been a powerful tool for the administration in its effort to tame the price of gasoline. It also signaled a "new era" of intervention on the part of the White House.
This brings front-and-center questions concerning the motivation of those behind this action. One of the implications of Biden's war on high oil prices is that it has short-circuited the fossil investment/supply development process. Capital expenditures among the five largest oil and gas companies have fallen as the price of oil has come under fire. The current under-investment in this sector is one of the reasons oil prices are likely to take a big jump in a few years. Production from existing wells is expected to rapidly fall.
The Supply Of Oil Is Far More Constant And Inelastic Than Demand
It is important to remember when it comes to oil, the supply is far more constant and inelastic than the demand. This means that it takes time and investment to bring new wells online while demand can rapidly change. This happened during the pandemic when countries locked down and told their populations and told them to stay at home. This resulted in the price of oil temporarily going negative because there was nowhere to store it.
Draining oil from the strategic reserve is a short-sighted and dangerous choice that will impact America's energy security at times of global uncertainty. In an effort to halt inflationary forces, Biden released a huge amount of crude oil from the SPR to artificially suppress fuel prices ahead of the midterm elections.
To date, Biden has dumped more SPR on the market than all previous presidents combined reducing the reserves to levels not seen since the early 1980s. In spite of how I feel about the inefficiencies of this program, it does serve a vital role. It is difficult to underestimate the importance of a country's ability to rapidly increase its domestic flow of oil. This defensive action protects its economy and adds to its resilience.
Biden's actions have put the whole country at risk. Critics of his policy pointed out the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was designed for use in an emergency not as a tool to manipulate elections. Another one of Biden's goals may be to bring about higher oil prices to reduce its use and accelerate the use of high-cost green energy.
Either way, Biden's war on oil has not made America's energy policies more efficient or the country stronger.
Government
The Disinformation-Industrial Complex Vs Domestic Terror
The Disinformation-Industrial Complex Vs Domestic Terror
Authored by Ben Weingarten via RealClearInvestigations.com,
Combating disinformation…

Authored by Ben Weingarten via RealClearInvestigations.com,
Combating disinformation has been elevated to a national security imperative under the Biden administration, as codified in its first-of-its-kind National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, published in June 2021.
That document calls for confronting long-term contributors to domestic terrorism.
In connection therewith, it cites as a key priority “addressing the extreme polarization, fueled by a crisis of disinformation and misinformation often channeled through social media platforms, which can tear Americans apart and lead some to violence.”
Media literacy specifically is seen as integral to this effort. The strategy adds that: “the Department of Homeland Security and others are either currently funding and implementing or planning evidence–based digital programming, including enhancing media literacy and critical thinking skills, as a mechanism for strengthening user resilience to disinformation and misinformation online for domestic audiences.”
Previously, the Senate Intelligence Committee suggested, in its report on “Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 Election” that a “public initiative—propelled by Federal funding but led in large part by state and local education institutions—focused on building media literacy from an early age would help build long-term resilience to foreign manipulation of our democracy.”
In June 2022, Democrat Senator Amy Klobuchar introduced the Digital Citizenship and Media Literacy Act, which – citing the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report – would fund a media literacy grant program for state and local education agencies, among other entities.
NAMLE and Media Literacy Now, both recipients of State Department largesse, endorsed the bill.
Acknowledging explicitly the link between this federal counter-disinformation push, and the media literacy education push, Media Literacy Now wrote in its latest annual report that ...
... the federal government is paying greater attention to the national security consequences of media illiteracy.
The Department of Homeland Security is offering grants to organizations to improve media literacy education in communities across the country. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense is incorporating media literacy into standard troop training, and the State Department is funding media literacy efforts abroad.
These trends are important for advocates to be aware of as potential sources of funding as well as for supporting arguments around integrating media literacy into K-12 classrooms.
When presented with notable examples of narratives corporate media promoted around Trump-Russia collusion, and COVID-19, to justify this counter-disinformation campaign, Media Literacy Now president Erin McNeill said: “These examples are disappointing.”
The antidote, in her view is, “media literacy education because it helps people not only recognize the bias in their news sources and seek out other sources, but also to demand and support better-quality journalism.” (Emphasis McNeill’s)
Government
Disney World Event Gives Florida Gov. DeSantis the Middle Finger
Walt Disney’s CEO Bob Iger has shown no willingness to back down in the face of the governor’s efforts to campaign against diversity training.

Walt Disney's CEO Bob Iger has shown no willingness to back down in the face of the governor's efforts to campaign against diversity training.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made Disney World, one of his state's largest employers, the target of his so-called war on woke.
At the root of the dispute are former Walt Disney (DIS) - Get Free Report CEO Bob Chapek's remarks opposing the Republican governor's new law, which limits the ability of educators to discuss gender identity and sexual orientation with children.
Labeled the Don't Say Gay bill, the law met with huge pushback from Disney employees, who had criticized Chapek for initially not speaking out against the bill.
That led the then-Disney boss to take a direct stand against the governor's actions, which in turn led DeSantis to strip the company of its special tax status.
DON'T MISS: Huge Crowds Force Disney World to Make Big Changes
DeSantis has decided to use Disney as the center of his political-theater culture war because it's an easy, and nonmoving, target. The company can't pack up Disney World and move it to New York, Massachusetts, or some other liberal bastion, so it mostly has to take whatever the governor dishes out.
But while DeSantis wants to use Disney as a target, he's mostly playing to the cameras; clearly, he's not actually looking to take down the largest single-site employer in the U.S. Disney World generates tens of thousands of jobs, pays the state a lot of money. and brings in billions of tourism dollars -- many of which are spent outside its gates in the broader Florida economy.
Image source: Shutterstock/TheStreet Illustration
Disney CEO Iger Uses Actions, Not Words
Disney CEO Bob Iger understands that actions speak louder than words and words can come back to haunt you.
The returned Mouse House boss has not called out DeSantis, nor did he fight the governor's takeover of its Reedy Creek Improvement District.
On paper, Disney World appears to have lost its right to self-govern. That's true, but it doesn't mean much because it's not as if the state -- even DeSantis's handpicked cronies who now oversee the former Reedy Creek Improvement District -- intend to actually get in Disney's way. The company prints money for the state.
So, that's why Iger -- who had publicly spoken against the Don't Say Gay bill when he was a private citizen and not Disney CEO, has not called out DeSantis. A speech decrying the governor's actions, pointing out that they “put vulnerable, young LGBTQ people in jeopardy,” as he said before taking the CEO job back, would not help Disney.
Instead, Iger has let his company's actions speak.
Disney World plans to host a "major conference promoting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in the workplace" at the Disney World Resort this September, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
Disney Boldly Challenges DeSantis
Disney World will host the annual Out & Equal Workplace Summit in September.
"The largest LGBTQ+ conference in the world, with more than 5,000 attendees every year. It brings together executives, ERG leaders and members, and HR and DEI professionals and experts -- all working for LGBTQ+ equality," the event's organizer, Out & Equal, said on its website.
"Over more than 20 years, Summit has grown to become the preferred place to network and share strategies that create inclusive workplaces, where everyone belongs and where LGBTQ+ employees can be out and thrive."
The Tampa Bay Times called simply hosting the event "a defiant display of the limits of DeSantis’s campaign against diversity training."
Disney World has hosted the event previously and the company has a relationship with Out & Equal going back many years.
Instead of giving a speech and becoming even more of a right-wing-media talking point, Iger showed his employees where Disney stands through his actions. It's a smart choice by a seasoned executive not to become an actor in DeSantis's political theater.
The Florida governor wants to be perceived as battling 'woke" Disney without actually hurting his state's relationship with the company. The newspaper described exactly how that works when it looked at the new government powers the state has taken from the theme park giant.
The subsequent legislation left most of Disney’s special powers in place despite the governor’s attempt to dissolve the district. The conservative members the governor appointed to the board hinted at the first meeting of the new board that they would exercise leverage over Disney, such as prohibiting COVID-19 restrictions at Disney World. But legal experts have said that the new board’s authority has no control over Disney content.
DeSantis wants a culture war, or at least one that'll play out in the media. Iger knows better and has played the situation perfectly.
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