Sooner Politics.org
  • Front Page
  • Oklahoma News
    • Oklahoma Reports
    • OCPAC
    • Oklahoma Constitution News
    • Citizen of the Year
    • Oklahoma History
    • Today, In History
    • Oklahoma Center Square
    • Faked Out Sports
    • AP Wire
    • NewsBreak Oklahoma
    • Inside the Capitol
    • Lawton Rocks
    • Muskogee Now
    • OSU Sports
  • Podcasts
  • SPTV
    • Fresh Black Coffee, with Eddie Huff
    • AircraftSparky
    • Red River TV
    • Oklahoma TV
    • E PLURIBUS OTAP
    • Tapp's Common Sense
  • Editorial
    • From the Editor
    • Weekend Report
    • 3D Politics
    • Reagan Speaks
  • Sooner Issues
    • Corruption Chronicle
    • Constitutional Grounds
    • State Groups
  • Sooner Analysts
    • OCPA
    • Muskogee Politico
    • Rooke Report
    • SoonerPoll
    • Everett Piper
    • Andrew Spiropoulos
    • Tulsa Devil's Advocate
    • Eddie Huff & Friends
    • 1889 Institute
    • Steve Byas
    • Michael Bates
    • Steve Fair
    • Josh Lewis
    • Tulsa Today
    • OK2A
    • Dr. Jim Meehan
    • AFP Oklahoma
    • Sooner Tea Party
  • Nation
    • Bongino Report
    • Breitbart News
    • Daily wire
    • Steven Crowder
    • InfoWars News
    • Jeff Davis
    • Alex Lains
    • The F1rst
    • Nigel Farage
    • NewsMax
    • America's Voice
    • Ron Paul Institute
    • Bill Gertz
    • Emerald
    • Just the News
    • Trey Gowdy
    • Fox Politics
    • National Commentary
  • Wit & Whimsy
    • Libs of Tiktok
    • It's Still The Law
    • Terrence Williams
    • Witty Cartoons
    • Will Rogers Said
    • Steeple Chasers
    • The Partisan
    • Satire
  • SoonerPolitics.org

Iraq 20 Years: The Uses and Abuses of National Intelligence Estimates

3/21/2023

0 Comments

 
undefined

A New York Times Magazine article in July 2020 focused on then Secretary of State Powell and his U.N. speech of Feb. 5, 2003 and the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) upon which it is largely based. A lot of the detail in the article may have been new to many readers, but not to Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, which had been established a month before. VIPS watched the speech, dissected it, and sent their verdict to President George W. Bush before close of business that same afternoon

We gave Powell a charitable grade of “C”, faulting him for, inter alia, not providing needed context and perspective. We should have flunked him outright.

Robert Draper’s article describes how, despite C.I.A.’s strong effort to please, the “case” the agency made for war on Iraq, using such evidence as there was on weapons of mass destruction, was deemed not alarmist enough for Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration hawks.

Specifically, the hawks were dissatisfied with the evidence-light, but-alarmist (term of art used was “leaning forward”) Pentagon and White House briefings by CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin in late Dec. 2002 on WMD in Iraq. The hawks started to look elsewhere, since not all senior officials (including Powell) appeared to be “with the program.”

Draper reports that Powell ordered Carl Ford, director of the widely respected State Department Intelligence Unit (INR), to review the bidding regarding biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. Ford’s analysts strongly disputed many of the key assertions from the usual suspects – particularly those coming from non-intelligence, war-friendly bureaucrats enlisted to support the war-lust proclivities of Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Powell’s chief of staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, was also spending an inordinate amount of time batting away unsourced and dubious-sourced assertions from Cheneyites, so Powell finally told Wilkerson to start drafting from scratch.

Here’s where it gets interesting; here is where a little history and inside-baseball intelligence experience comes in handy. Draper quotes Powell: “It was George Tenet who came to the rescue.”

CIA Director Tenet suggested basing a new draft on the National Intelligence Estimate of Oct. 1, 2002, “Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction.” That had immense appeal to Tenet and others who had been co-opted into “leaning forward” to facilitate a Bush/Cheney war on Iraq. Indeed, one can assume it had appeal to most of those involved in Powell’s speech preparation, given that the Security Council briefing was but a handful of days away.

I have been referring to that NIE, advisedly, as The Whore of Babylon, wrong on every major accusation about WMD in Iraq. I speak from experience at the CIA as a former chair of National Intelligence Estimates. This one was prepared not to determine the truth, but rather to “justify” a preemptive war on Iraq, where there was nothing to preempt.

To their credit, State/INR analysts had expressed formal dissent from some of its main conclusions back in September 2002.

No, it is not possible that Powell could have been unaware of that. And it is not difficult to explain why Powell chose to spurn his own intelligence analysts, despite their relatively solid reputation. I will resist the temptation to guess at Powell’s motivation, even though I have had some considerable experience with him. Back in the day, we used to spend a few minutes comparing notes before my one-on-one morning briefings of his boss, Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, with The President’s Daily Brief.

I am not surprised, though, as Draper quotes Powell explaining his decision to stay in place as secretary of state and to do what he was told: “I knew I didn’t have any choice. He’s the President.” Draper adds that, “although Powell would not admit it, Bush’s request that he be the one to make the case against Hussein to the UN was enormously flattering. Cheney took a more direct approach: ‘The Vice President said to me: “You’re the most popular man in America. Do something with that popularity.””

The All-Purpose NIE on Iraqi WMD

Draper describes INR’s Director Ford as “heartsick” watching Powell on TV before the UN Security Council. Ford’s chagrin was widely shared among serious intelligence analysts – as well as by us alumni watching the prostitution of what had been our tell-it-like-it-is intelligence analysis profession. But there the National Intelligence Estimate was for plucking – an intelligence community-endorsed consensus already “on the books” – and with drafting time running out.

Admittedly, this would be a far cry from starting “from scratch.” Rather, it became a case of “garbage in, garbage out.” Draper names the intelligence garbagemen: CIA Director Tenet, his deputy McLaughlin, the chair of the NIE Robert Walpole, for example. They were out and out guilty of fixing the NIE in the first place and then its derivative that Powell briefed in open session to Security Council. No, these were not innocent mistakes. The intelligence was fraudulent from the get-go.

I am not making this up. Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity were able to see what was coming, and warned Bush on the afternoon of Powell’s speech to be wary of “those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.” VIPs followed up with two more Memos before the March 2003 US/UK attack on Iraq.

The leaked Downing Street Minutes, published by The Times of London on May 1, 2005, provided the “smoking gun.” The minutes, from a July 23, 2002 briefing of Prime Minister Tony Blair by the chief of British intelligence, just back from consultations with Tenet in Langley, showed that the White House had already decided to attack Iraq for regime change and that the “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”. [Emphasis added.]

This and additional detail is covered in a chapter I wrote in 2005, for the book Neo-CONNED Again!, which I titled “Sham Dunk: Cooking Intelligence for the President.”

Sadly, not one of the many intelligence functionaries aware of what was going on went to the media or resigned. In contrast, before the attack on Iraq, three senior Foreign Service Officers, looking on from Athens, Ulaanbaatar, and Washington, summarily quit on principle – so clear had it become that the US was embarked on a so-called “war of choice.”

“War of choice” is more formally known as “war of aggression” – defined at the post WWII Nuremberg Tribunal as “the supreme international crime differing from other war crimes only in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” (Think torture, for example, as part of that accumulation.)

Equally sad, none of the perpetrators of the crime have been held to account for this crime, nor even for torture and other accumulated evils. No one held to account. Col. Pat Lang and I addressed this issue in an op-ed in 2007; we argued that the US could ill afford letting the Iraq War-liars off lightly, even if that meant taking a hard look back over previous years.

What is the inevitable result when no one is held to account?

Putting a coda on all this several years later, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee announced on June 5, 2008 the bipartisan conclusions of a five-year study by his committee that the attack on Iraq was launched “under false pretenses.” He described the intelligence conjured up to “justify” war on Iraq as “uncorroborated, contradicted, or even non-existent.”

“Nonexistent” intelligence?

Finally, for those who may continue to believe that Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice (of “mushroom cloud” fame”), for example, were mistaken, rather than lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, let me suggest watching this very short video.

“… we heard that Vice President Cheney was pushing the Pentagon for intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and then the order came down [to Clapper as director of NIMA, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency] to find the WMD sites. We set to work, analyzing imagery to eventually identify, with varying degrees of confidence, more than 950 sites where we assessed there might be WMDs or a WMD connection. We drew on all of NIMA’s skill sets … and it was all wrong.”
During the Q and A I commented on Clapper’s eagerness to please whatever superiors he was working for at the time, and give them the information they lusted for to “justify” things like war – to the point of finding “what wasn’t really there.”?

I noted that exactly two years earlier, the Obamas and Clintons were desperate to blame Donald Trump’s victory on Russian interference. And so, I asked, was this a repeat performance? Had Clapper snapped to and again “found what really wasn’t there?” This, I emphasized, was the conclusion of VIPs, including two former technical directors at NSA who had done the forensic research on how DNC emails ended up at WikiLeaks – the work the FBI decided not to do.

Why Not an NIE on Russian Interference?

Here’s the rub. In December 2016, Clapper rejected a request from House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) to provide a briefing to members on Russia’s alleged meddling in the November election.

The denial prompted Nunes to cast doubt on recent claims coming out of the CIA, including whether or not there really is an agency assessment that Moscow was aiming to help Trump win the presidency. “We want to clarify press reports that the CIA has a new assessment that it has not shared with us,” he added.

Nunes was more pointed in a letter to Director of National Intelligence Clapper. He claimed he was “dismayed” that the committee had not been informed about reports that the CIA had revised information that it previously reported to members. Nunes noted that during an open hearing in November, Clapper said the evidence connecting the government of Russia to WikiLeaks was “not as strong,” and that the intel community didn’t have “good insight into” the issue.

At about the same time, several Democratic senators, including Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Ben Cardin (D-MD), wrote a letter to Clapper requesting an NIE on “Russian efforts to manipulate the recent US presidential election.”

“Given the serious nature of these matters, with unprecedented national security implications, we believe that our intelligence community must prioritize a conclusive, public NIE to lay out the facts of this serious matter for the American people,” the senators urged in their letter.

Oops. Lame duck Clapper and his bosses suddenly developed a Tenet-like allergy to preparing a full blown NIE. The White House opted instead to commission Clapper to do a study for Obama. The Democrats in Congress may well have been warned about the thinness of the evidence (now thoroughly debunked) that Russia hacked the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks. In any event, they acquiesced in what Clapper misnamed an “Intelligence Community Assessment” titled “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections.”

An NIE, of course, would have required the participation of all 17 intelligence agencies, some of whom, like State/INR, might ask troublesome questions about the evidence as well as the conclusions. Clapper’s lame excuse that there was not enough time to do a full NIE does not pass the smell test.

After several months of advertising the “Intelligence Community Assessment” as the product of all 17 intelligence agencies, Clapper was forced to admit to Congress that, well, actually only the CIA, F.B.I., and NSA were involved; and, well, actually only “handpicked analysts” from those three. Notably shut out of the process were that pesky INR (with its substantial expertise on Russia) and the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has charter responsibility for keeping tabs on the GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency alleged to have done the hacking.

Former US Ambassador to Russia Jack Matlock asked a former colleague why State/INR was frozen out of the process. His friend explained simply that INR did not agree with the analysis – and not for the first time.

In other words, the Jan. 6, 2017 “Intelligence Community Assessment” was deliberately organized as a rump effort to come up with the answers Clapper’s White House bosses wanted – a reprise of his performance with imagery analysis on WMD in Iraq.

And off and running went Russiagate.

This escapade actually may have been easier for Clapper who may believe what he said during an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd on May 28, 2017; namely that the Russians are “almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique.” Certainly, Clapper would not want any State Department pin-stripers messing with his firm handle on the make-up of Russian chromosomes.

Clapper and his colleagues are no longer in office and, by some estimates, may be lucky to stay out of jail.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). 

Reprinted with permission from Antiwar.com.

Iraq 20 Years: The Uses and Abuses of National Intelligence Estimates
Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity
0 Comments

Its Moving Its Alive! Alvin Bragg Prepares the Ultimate Frankenstein Indictment

3/21/2023

0 Comments

 
undefined

Below is my column in the New York Post on the expected indictment against former President Donald Trump. It is an effort to reanimate a long dead legal claim against Trump, but could reanimate his presidential campaign.

Here is the column:

“It’s moving. It’s alive. It’s alive . . . it’s moving . . . IT’S ALIVE!”

The scene from the 1931 movie “Frankenstein” came to mind this week as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg prepared an indictment of former President Donald Trump.

It is the ultimate gravedigger charge, where Bragg unearthed a case from 2016 and, through a series of novel steps, is seeking to bring it back to life.

Of course, like the good doctor, Bragg shows little concern over what he has created in his Frankenstein indictment.

Bragg is combining parts from both state and federal codes.

He is reportedly going to convert a misdemeanor for falsifying financial records into a prosecution of a federal crime.

The federal crime is reportedly the failure to report a payment of $130,000 to former porn star Stormy Daniels to hush up an affair.

That was just before the presidential election and Bragg is alleging that it was an effective campaign donation.

Bragg is attempting something that many lawyers think is as improbable as the reanimation of the dead.

The Justice Department itself declined this prosecution and both the former chair of the Federal Election Commission and various election law experts have thrown shade on the theory.

Not only did Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance, not bring this case, but Bragg himself stopped the prosecution.

It was after one of Bragg’s lead prosecutors resigned and wrote a book on prosecuting Trump that pressure became too much for the district attorney, who grabbed his shovel and went to work.

There are serious challenges to this prosecution, including an argument that time has expired under the statute of limitations.

The limit is two years for a misdemeanor and, even if he can convert this into a felony, it is not clear if he can meet the longer five-year limitation.

Bragg will have to convince a court that Trump paid the hush money for the sole purpose of the election.

As a married man and television celebrity, Trump had other reasons to try to avoid a scandal.

That is precisely why such cases (like one against former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards) failed in prior prosecutions.

However, the greater danger may come if he succeeds in moving this case to trial.

Locals in New York will be thrilled, but will the rest of the country join the pitch-folk carrying mob?

This is a patently political prosecution.

Indeed, of all of the potential charges that Trump is facing in Washington, Atlanta and New York, this is one that he must have hoped would come first.

The investigation into Trump’s actions at Mar-a-Lago by the Justice Department raise well-established crimes and an array of evidence.

While a possible charge in Georgia over election violations is weaker, it is also based on a stronger legal foundation.If Trump were seeking a way to prove the political weaponization of the criminal justice system, Bragg just fulfilled that narrative.

Now, if these other cases result in charges, it will look like Democrats are piling on to knock Trump out of the race for 2024.

They will be painted by this transparently political prosecution.

Indeed, voters could well view the election as a vote against the establishment and the media — the very thing that got Trump elected in 2016.

A prosecution is likely to extend beyond the election.

However, if it is thrown out before that date, it will again reinforce Trump’s claims of political targeting.

The prosecution could add a truly wicked dimension to the election.

While Biden is accused of illegally possessing an array of classified material in various locations, the Justice Department has long (in my view, wrongly) followed a policy that it cannot prosecute a sitting president.

However, would it indict Trump but not Biden on that basis? Again, the public is unlikely to stand for a perceived double standard.

Then there is the question of a self-pardon. I have long maintained that a president can pardon himself.

That would mean that the election could become a vote on who you want protected from prosecution: Biden (under the DOJ rule) or Trump (under a self pardon).

While many celebrate Bragg restoring life to the statutorily deceased, they should consider what he has created.

Bragg is releasing this case into a public that is already on edge.

Polls show that a large number of Americans believe that the legal system is being politicized and hold both state and federal government in suspicion.

A fifth of Americans now view the government as the greatest threat facing the nation. What is truly shocking is that 53 percent in one poll agreed with the statement that the FBI acts like “Biden’s Gestapo.”

This case could well succeed at trial, but it will come at a great cost even if overturned on appeal. It is inviting other prosecutors to act with the same political abandon.

In the 1931 movie, Dr. Frankenstein was warned, “You have created a monster, and it will destroy you!”

Bragg is risking the reanimation of more than a cadaverous crime.Indeed, he could single handily reanimate the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org.


It’s Moving, It’s Alive! Alvin Bragg Prepares the Ultimate Frankenstein Indictment
Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity
0 Comments

Iraq was 20 Years Ago Today

3/21/2023

0 Comments

 
undefined

I was part of Iraq 2.0, heading two embedded civilian provincial reconstruction teams (ePRTs) 2009-2010 and wrote a book critical of the program, We Meant Well, for which was I was punished into involuntary retirement by my employer the U.S. State Department. The working title for the book was originally “Lessons for Afghanistan from the Failed Reconstruction of Iraq” and was meant to explain how our nation building efforts failed to accomplish anything except setting afire rampant corruption, and how repeating them nearly dollar-for-dollar in the Afghan theatre was just going to yield the same results. After all, isn’t one definition of madness doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results?

The title of my book changed to something less academic sounding, coming out as it did around the tenth anniversary of Iraq War 2.0. It is important to look back accurately; on the tenth anniversary the meme was still that the Surge was going to work, that the final push of soldiers and civilian reconstructors was going to break Al Qaeda in Iraq by coopting their indigenous Sunni partners. “Jury Still Out on Iraq Invasion” wrote Politico. My editor selfishly hoped the war would still be going on in a few months so we might sell some books. I knew we had something to worry about, not that the war would fail to drag on but that the failures would be so obvious no one would see the need to read a whole book about them.

The way it all worked was like this. Washington would determine some broad theme-of-the-month (such as women’s empowerment) aimed at a domestic American audience. The theme would filter down to us at the PRT level and we were to concoct some sort of “project,” something tangible on the ground, preferably something that showed well in the media we’d invite to see our progress. It wasn’t hard because corrupt organizations arose like flowers from the desert to take our money. Usually run by a local Tony Soprano-type warlord, the organization would morph in name alone as needed from local activist group to NGO to entrepreneur incubator depending on the project. We’d give them boxes full of dollars (nobody wanted Iraqi money, a clue) and perhaps some event would occur, or a speaker might be brought in. We funded bakeries on streets without water, paid for plays on getting along with neighbors, and threw money at all this only because no one could find a match to just set fire to it directly. Little was expected in the end outside a nice slideshow celebrating another blow for democracy. In shopping for hearts and minds in Iraq, we made bizarre impulse purchases, described elsewhere as “checkbook diplomacy.”

As Iraq morphed into a subject we were just not going to talk about very much (one journalist who read my early draft opined “So you’re the guy who is going to write the last critical book on Iraq before Petraeus takes a victory lap in his”) attention turned to Afghanistan. I knew this because suddenly I was flooded with requests to write recommendations for the same people who had failed so completely in Iraq to work in Afghanistan. As part of some escalation or another, the military was rehiring most of the civilians who had failed to reconstruct Iraq into exactly the same roles in Afghanistan, presumably to (fail) to reconstruct that sad place.

I dutifully answered each personnel inquiry accurately, fully, and as a patriot, with the hope that someone would see what was going on and put a goddamn stop to it. I was very wrong. The key element of the fantasy was the reconstruction effort, the idea that rebuilding Afghanistan via $141 billion in roads and schools and bridges and hardware stores would gut the Taliban’s own more brutal hearts and minds efforts. That was the same plan as in Iraq only minutes earlier, where between 2003 and 2014, more than $220 billion was spent on rebuilding the country. Nonetheless, the Iraqi failure on full display, the United States believed that economic and social development programming would increase support for the Afghan government and reduce support for the Taliban (the log line for the war script.)

However, as had its sister organization in Iraq, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) wrote “the theory that economic and social development programing could produce such outcomes had weak empirical foundations.” Former Ambassador to Afghanistan Michael McKinley noted, “It wasn’t that everyone, including conservative rural populations, didn’t appreciate services… But that didn’t seem to change their views.” As the Army War College wrote, “This idea that if you build a road or a hospital or a school, people will then come on board and support the government — there’s no evidence of that occurring anywhere since 1945, in any internal conflict. It doesn’t work.” As an American former advisor to President Ghani told SIGAR, “Building latrines does not make you love Ashraf Ghani.” But that was indeed the plan and it failed spectacularly, slow over its own twenty years then all at once last August. SIGAR summed up: “U.S. efforts to build and sustain Afghanistan’s governing institutions were a total, epic, predestined failure on par with the same efforts and outcome in the Vietnam war, and for the same reasons.”

No, wait, nobody said any of those things during the Afghan war, only afterwards when it was time to look around and assign blame to someone other than oneself. The Iraq reconstruction failed to account for the lessons of Vietnam (the CORDS program in particular.) The Afghan reconstruction failed to account for the lessons of Iraq. We now sit and wait to see the coming Ukraine reconstruction fail to remember any of it at all.

“It is obvious that American business can become the locomotive that will once again push forward global economic growth,” President Zelensky said, boasting BlackRock, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs, and others “have already become part of our Ukrainian way.” The NYT calls Ukraine “the world’s largest construction site” and predicts projects there in the multi-billions, as high in some estimates as 750 billion. It will be, says the Times, a “gold rush: the reconstruction of Ukraine once the war is over. Already the staggering rebuilding task is evident. Hundreds of thousands of homes, schools, hospitals and factories have been obliterated along with critical energy facilities and miles of roads, rail tracks and seaports. The profound human tragedy is unavoidably also a huge economic opportunity.”

We did worse than nothing. Iraq before our invasion(s) was a more or less stable place, good enough that Saddam was even an ally of sorts during the Iraq-Iran War. By the time we were finished Iraq was a corrupt client state of Iran. Where once most literate Americans knew the name of the Iraqi Prime Minister, a regular White House guest, unless he’s changed his name to Zelensky nobody cares anymore. And that’s what the sign on the door leading out of Iraq (and perhaps into Ukraine) reads — thousands of lives and billions of dollars later, no one cares, if they even remember.

Reprinted with permission from WeMeantWell.com.


Iraq was 20 Years Ago Today…
Click on the headline to read the full story from
0 Comments

Trump And Putin To The Slammer?

3/20/2023

0 Comments

 
In what increasingly looks like the politicization of justice, last week saw the International Criminal Court (not recognized by the US) indict Russian president Vladimir Putin for allegedly sending children out of the Ukraine war zone and this week former President Donald Trump says he may be arrested and charged with a "crime" that looks very shaky. Also today: US says "no ceasefire" for Ukraine. And finally...about that drone. Today on the Liberty Report:



Trump And Putin To The Slammer?
Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity
0 Comments

'True Stories Could Fuel Hesitancy': Stanford Project Worked to Censor Even True Stories on Social Media

3/20/2023

0 Comments

 
undefined

While lost in the explosive news about Donald Trump’s expected arrest, journalist Matt Taibbi released new details on previously undisclosed censorship efforts on social media. The latest Twitter Files revealed a breathtaking effort from Stanford’s Virality Project to censor even true stories. After all, the project insisted “true stories … could fuel hesitancy” over taking the vaccine or other measures. The effort included suppressing stories that we now know are legitimate such as natural immunity defenses, the exaggerated value of masks, and questions over vaccine efficacy in preventing second illnesses. The work of the Virality Project to censor even true stories should result in the severance of any connection with Stanford University.

We have learned of an ever-expanding coalition of groups working with the government and social media to target and censor Americans, including government-funded organizations.

However, the new files are chilling in the details allegedly showing how the Virality Project labeled even true stories as “anti-vaccine” and, therefore, subject to censorship. These files would suggest that the Project eagerly worked to limit free speech and suppress alternative scientific viewpoints.

Taibbi describes the Virality Project as “a sweeping, cross-platform effort to monitor billions of social media posts by Stanford University, federal agencies, and a slew of (often state-funded) NGOs.”

1.TWITTER FILES #19
The Great Covid-19 Lie Machine
Stanford, the Virality Project, and the Censorship of “True Stories” pic.twitter.com/v41dyC26ZR

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
He added: “We’ve since learned the Virality Project in 2021 worked with government to launch a pan-industry monitoring plan for Covid-related content. At least six major Internet platforms were ‘onboarded’ to the same JIRA ticketing system, daily sending millions of items for review.”

6.We’ve since learned the Virality Project in 2021 worked with government to launch a pan-industry monitoring plan for Covid-related content. At least six major Internet platforms were “onboarded” to the same JIRA ticketing system, daily sending millions of items for review.

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) March 17, 2023
According to Taibbi, it targeted anyone who did not robotically fall in line with the CDC and media narratives, including targeting postings that shared “Reports of vaccinated individuals contracting Covid-19 anyway,” research on “natural immunity,” suggesting Covid-19 “leaked from a lab,” and even “worrisome jokes.”

That included evidence that it “knowingly targeted true material and legitimate political opinion, while often being factually wrong itself.”

The Virality Project warned Twitter that “true stories … could fuel hesitancy,” including stories on “celebrity deaths after vaccine” and the closure of a central New York school due to reports of post-vaccine illness.

The Project is part of the Cyber Policy Center at Stanford and bills itself as “a joint initiative of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Law School, connects academia, the legal and tech industry and civil society with policymakers around the country to address the most pressing cyber policy concerns.”

The Center launched the Project as a “a global study aimed at understanding the disinformation dynamics specific to the COVID-19 crisis.”

As with many disinformation projects, it became a source of its own disinformation in the effort to suppress alternative views.

It is being funded by Craig Newmark Philanthropies and the Hewlett Foundation.

On its website, it proclaims: “At the Stanford Internet Observatory our mission is to study the misuse of the internet to cause harm, and to help create policy and technical mitigations to those harms.” It defines its mission to maintain the truth as it sees it:
The global COVID-19 crisis has significantly shifted the landscape for mis- and disinformation as the pandemic has become the primary concern of almost every nation on the planet. This has perhaps never happened before; few topics have commanded and sustained attention at a global level simultaneously, or provided such a wealth of opportunities for governments, economically motivated actors, and domestic activists alike to spread malign narratives in service to their interests.
What is even more disconcerting is that groups like the Virality Project worked against public health by suppressing such stories that are now considered legitimate from the efficacy of masks to the lab origin theory. It was declaring dissenting scientific views to be dangerous disinformation. Nothing could be more inimical to the academic mission. Yet, Stanford still heralds the work of the Project on its website.

There is nothing more inherently in conflict with academic values than censorship. Stanford’s association with this censorship effort is disgraceful and should be a matter for faculty action. This is a project that sought to censor true stories that undermined government or media narratives.

I am not hopeful that Stanford will sever its connection to the Project. Censorship is now the rage on campuses and the Project is the perfect embodiment of this movement. Cloaking censorship efforts in self-righteous rhetoric, the Project sought to silence those who failed to adhere to a certain orthodoxy, including scientific and public health claims that were later found flawed or wrong. The Project itself is an example of what it called “media and social media capabilities – overt and covert – to spread particular narratives.”

Stanford should fulfill its pledge in creating the Virality Project in fighting disinformation by eliminating the Virality Project.

Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org.

'True Stories … Could Fuel Hesitancy': Stanford Project Worked to Censor Even True Stories on Social Media
Click on the headline to read the full story from
0 Comments

Operation Babylift and the Hypocrisy of the International Criminal Court

3/20/2023

0 Comments

 
undefined

In the “collective West,” hypocrisy rules the narrative, most recently in regard to the ICC and the “kidnapped” children of Ukraine.

In America, the scurrilous neocon and warmonger propagandist Max Boot weighed in on the meaningless and unenforcible decision to arrest President Putin. Boot’s argument is delusional, but then neocons thrive on lies and delusions.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine can be seen as a desperate gambit to increase Russia’s declining population at gunpoint.

That the Russians have kidnapped at least 11,000 Ukrainian children looks especially sinister in light of Russia’s baby deficit. https://t.co/bC1Qgi7VTL

— Max Boot ???? (@MaxBoot) March 14, 2023
Propaganda, pure and simple. Boot is an accessory to mass murder, having advocated the invasion of Iraq, the slaughter of over a million Iraqis, and the engineered destruction of their country.

The hypocritical ICC didn’t bother to contrast and compare Putin’s supposed abduction of Ukrainian children to an organized mass kidnapping of Vietnamese children. It was dubbed “Operation Babylift,” ordered by then President Ford, and was conducted at the end of the Vietnam War as the USG evacuated, having lost the war.

The Vietnamese children abducted without permission were described as “orphans,” although many had parents and relatives that were left behind. 3,300 children, described as “infants” (many were older children), were parceled out to families in America, Australia, West Germany, and France.

The “rescue” of these children was an organized act of kidnapping pure and simple, yet in the Land of Amnesia, millions of Americans know nothing about it (or, for that matter, the Vietnam War itself and the brutal destruction of Southeast Asia).

In 1975, a class action suit was filed in San Francisco on behalf of the kidnapped children.

“The suit seeks to enjoin adoption proceedings until it has been ascertained either that the parents or appropriate relatives in Vietnam have consented to their adoption or that these parents or relatives cannot be found,” The Adoption History Project notes. “The Complaint alleged that several of the Vietnamese orphans brought to the United States under Operation Babylift stated they are not orphans and that they wish to return to Vietnam.”

A statement issued on April 4, 1975, by “professors of ethics and religion,” pointed out that many “of the children are not orphans; their parents or relatives may still be alive, although displaced, in Vietnam… The Vietnamese children should be allowed to stay in Vietnam where they belong.”

The operation was celebrated by the corporate media and “Hollywood’s celebrity elite… [and, as a propaganda event] generated a spectacle of celebration and emphasized that the babies were more than just average orphans,” writes US History Scene.
Uncritical acceptance of the Vietnam war orphans did not last long. A variety of American voices that ranged from child psychologists to news reporters to the casual observer soon began asking whether the evacuation served the best interests of the children. This concern followed closely on the heels of criticism over US motivation for the evacuation. Much of this controversy began when the unclear orphan status of some of the children came to light. The government of South Vietnam reluctantly allowed so many children to leave the country only under the condition that those who left would already be in the adoption process. Volunteers processing the children found that not all of them fit into this category of orphan. In the processing centers, some of the children told the volunteers that they were not orphans and had families living back in Vietnam.
Naturally, Operation Babylift is all but forgotten today. It would be counterproductive to the onslaught of USG and ICC propaganda, not directed at the welfare of children, but rather as a crude “informational” device to further turn opinion against Russia’s SMO to denazify and disarm Ukraine and, in addition, prevent NATO from undermining Russian national security.

Finally, I cannot recall the ICC denouncing the post-coup regime in Kyiv for its savage eight-plus-year bombardment of the Donbas. Between April 2014 to April 2021, the USG-supported conflict in Donbas killed 152 and injured 146 children. The tragedy was underscored by a photo of “the deaths of 23-year old Kristina Zhuk and her daughter, 10-month old Kira, (note, the linked image is disturbing) during the bombardment of the public square in Horlivka,” writes Daria Platonova for Strife.

Of course, none of this, including the genocidal murder of adults in Donbas by Russian-hating neo-nazi misanthropes (with USG-provided artillery), is covered by the criminal war propaganda corporate media. Sputnik International ran this article detailing the murder of innocents. No doubt, if noticed at all in the “collective West,” it was ignored.

Finally, those posting to social media in support of the authoritarian Zelenskyy and his thugs are providing encouragement for genocidal monsters who torture, rape, murder, and burn alive not only mothers but their babies as well.

Thankfully, Putin has saved thousands of children, and adult refugees as well, from the sort of wanton and indiscriminate murder suffered by “The Madonna of Gorlovka,” Kristina Zhuk, and her infant child.

Simply put, if you support Ukraine, you support the murder of babies.

Reprinted with permission from Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics.


Operation Babylift and the Hypocrisy of the International Criminal Court
Click on the headline to read the full story from
0 Comments

Are Bank Failures a Sign of More Trouble Ahead?

3/20/2023

0 Comments

 
undefined

The failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 10 was the second largest bank failure in US history. Just two days following SVB’s collapse, Signature Bank joined the record books as the third largest bank failure in US history. First Republic Bank also seemed on the edge of collapse until Bank of America, Citigroup, and other big banks agreed to jointly fund a bailout for it.

Major Swiss bank Credit Suisse was also teetering on the brink when it received a 54 billion dollars line of credit from the Swiss UBS Group last week. Now, UBS is in the process of buying Credit Suisse. Politicians, regulators, and financial “experts” all rushed to assure us these problems were all caused by factors unique to the individual banks and were not a sign of a systemic weakness in the banking system.

The bank failures and near failures caused nervous banks to borrow a combined 164.8 billion dollars in one week from the Federal Reserve’s discount window and the Bank Term Funding Program, a new program created by the Fed to make loans to troubled banks. The Fed created this program even though supposedly there is no systemic problem in the banking industry.

While SVB didn’t receive a bailout, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) guaranteed the full amount of all deposits even though Congress set a standard FDIC guarantee on deposits of up to 250,000 dollars. By covering all SVB deposits, the FDIC has created an expectation among depositors at major financial institutions (as well as the institutions themselves) that the government will cover 100 percent of deposits. This will cause both depositors and banks to make investment decisions they typically would not make, thus guaranteeing larger bank failures followed by more bailouts for wealthy depositors.

Some have blamed the current bank failures, along with other signs that the economy is on the verge of a major downturn, on the Federal Reserve’s interest rate increases. It is true the Fed bears responsibility. However, the rate increases are not the problem. The problem is the “easy money” and low or zero interest rate policies the Fed pushed since the 2008 market meltdown, which was caused by the bursting of the Fed-created housing bubble. Federal Reserve manipulation of the money supply distorts interest rates, which are the price of money. This distorts the signals sent to market actors regarding the true value of investing in particular industries. The result is malinvestments in those industries creating a bubble. The bubble will inevitably burst.

The economic downturn that follows the bursting of a bubble is necessary to cleanse the economy of the malinvestments. The correction will not last long and the economy will emerge stronger if Congress, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve refrain from “stimulating” the economy with federal spending and artificially low interest rates. Government interference, however, can create yet another bubble, setting the stage for another crash.

The new wave of bank failures is an indication that the US economy is either in or on the verge of another serious Fed-caused recession. With nations seeking to end the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, the end of America’s disastrous experiment with fiat money, and with it the welfare-warfare state, could be on the horizon. The collapse can be accompanied by civil unrest and greater restrictions on liberty. However, the spreading authoritarianism can also spur a growth in the movement for individual liberty, a free market, and limited government that could make the dark night of authoritarianism a prelude to a new dawn of liberty.


Are Bank Failures a Sign of More Trouble Ahead?
Click on the headline to read the full story from
0 Comments

3 Years to Slow The Spread: Covid hysteria and the creation of a never-ending crisis

3/18/2023

0 Comments

 
undefined

Thursday marked the three year anniversary of the infamous “15 Days To Slow The Spread” campaign.

By March 16, yours truly was already pretty fed up with both the governmental and societal “response” to what was being baselessly categorized as the worst pandemic in 100 years, despite zero statistical data supporting such a serious claim.

The Moment That Shook the World: "15 Days to Slow the Spread" (March 16, 2020)

Fauci: "In states with evidence of community transmission, bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms, and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be https://t.co/T9CGrYFNjv… https://t.co/SwDYBgN438 pic.twitter.com/k5oaU36YAR

— The Vigilant Fox ? (@VigilantFox) March 16, 2023
I was living in the Washington, D.C. Beltway at the time, and it was pretty much impossible to find a like-minded person within 50 miles who also wasn’t taking the bait. After I read about the news coming out of Wuhan in January, I spent much of the next couple weeks catching up to speed and reading about what a modern pandemic response was supposed to look like.

What surprised me most was that none of “the measures” were mentioned, and that these designated “experts” were nothing more than failed mathematicians, government doctors, and college professors who were more interested in policy via shoddy academic forecasting than observing reality.

Within days of continually hearing their yapping at White House pressers, it quickly became clear that the Deborah Birxes and Anthony Faucis of the world were engaging in nothing more than a giant experiment. There was no evidence-based approach to managing Covid whatsoever. These figures were leaning into the collective hysteria, and brandishing their credentials as Public Health Experts to demand top-down approaches to stamping out the WuFlu.

DeSantis on Covid lockdowns: “So I call and say, ‘Deborah [Birx], tell me: when in American history has this been done?’ And she says, ‘It’s kind of our own science experiment that we’re doing in real time.’”

Lockdowns were Fauci's “science experiment”?pic.twitter.com/K7H8NIBPaV

— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) March 14, 2023
To put it bluntly, these longtime government bureaucrats had no idea what the f—k they were doing. Fauci and his cohorts were not established or reputable scientists, but authoritarians, charlatans, who had a decades-long track record of hackery and corruption. This Coronavirus Task Force did not have the collective intellect nor the wisdom to be making these broad brush decisions.

Back then, there were only literally a handful of people who attempted to raise awareness about the wave of tyranny, hysteria, and anti-science policies that were coming our way. There were so few of us back in March in 2020 that it was impossible to form any kind of significant structured resistance to the madness that was unfolding before us. These structures would later form, but not until the infrastructure for the highway to Covid hysteria hell had already been cemented.

Making matters worse was the reality that the vast majority of the population — friends, colleagues, peers and family included — agreed that dissenters were nothing more than reckless extremists, bioterrorists, Covid deniers, anti-science rabble rousers, and the like.

Yet we were right, and we had the evidence and data to prove it. There was no evidence to ever support such a heavy-handed series of government initiatives to “slow the spread.”

By March 16, 2020, data had already accumulated indicating that this contagion would be no more lethal than an influenza outbreak.

The February, 2020 outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship provided a clear signal that the hysteria models provided by Bill Gates-funded and managed organizations were incredibly off base. Of the 3,711 people aboard the Diamond Princess, about 20% tested positive with Covid. The majority of those who tested positive had zero symptoms. By the time all passengers had disembarked from the vessel, there were 7 reported deaths on the ship, with the average age of this cohort being in the mid 80s, and it wasn’t even clear if these passengers died from or with Covid.

Despite the strange photos and videos coming out of Wuhan, China, there was no objective evidence of a once in a century disease approaching America’s shores, and the Diamond Princess outbreak made that clear.

Of course, it wasn’t the viral contagion that became the problem.

It was the hysteria contagion that brought out the worst qualities of much of the global ruling class, letting world leaders take off their proverbial masks in unison and reveal their true nature as power drunk madmen.

And even the more decent world leaders were swept up in the fear and mayhem, turning over the keys of government control to the supposed all-knowing Public Health Experts.

They quickly shuttered billions of lives and livelihoods, wreaking exponentially more havoc than a novel coronavirus ever could.

In the United States, 15 Days to Slow The Spread quickly became 30 Days To Slow The Spread. Somewhere along the way, the end date for “the measures” was removed from the equation entirely.

undefined

3 years later, there still isn’t an end date…

Anthony Fauci appeared on MSNBC Thursday morning and declared that Americans would need annual Covid boosters to compliment their Flu shots.

NEW - Fauci: Americans will likely need "a booster shot once a year."pic.twitter.com/Ec0zSWhV2b

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) March 16, 2023
So much of the Covid hysteria era was driven by pseudoscience and outright nonsense, and yet, very few if any world leaders took it upon themselves to restore sanity in their domains. Now, unsurprisingly, so many elected officials who were complicit in this multi-billion person human tragedy won’t dare to reflect upon it.

In a 1775 letter from John Adams to his wife, Abigail, the American Founding Father wrote:
Liberty once lost is lost forever. When the People once surrender their share in the Legislature, and their Right of defending the Limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every Encroachment upon them, they can never regain it.
Covid hysteria and the 3 year anniversary of 15 Days To Slow The Spread serves as the beginning period of a permanent scar resulting from government power grabs and federal overreach. While life is back to normal in most of the country, the Overton window of acceptable policy has slid even further in the direction of push-button tyranny. Hopefully, much of the world has awakened to the reality that most of the people in charge aren’t actually doing what’s best for their respective populations.

Reprinted with permission from The Dossier.
Subscribe and support here.


3 Years to Slow The Spread: Covid hysteria and the creation of a never-ending crisis
Click on the headline to read the full story from
0 Comments

Ron Paul Challenged the Coronavirus Tyranny from the Beginning

3/17/2023

0 Comments

 
undefined

Thursday was three years since President Donald Trump announced the “15 days to slow the spread” campaign that played a big role in propelling the use of new expansive government powers to limit the exercise of freedom in the name of countering coronavirus. The campaign both did not slow the spread and did not end after 15 days. What it did do was help grow and maintain tyrannical policies of the United States, state, and local governments that were marketed as based in science and promoting of health but that in reality were grounded in pseudoscience and harmful to health.

While innumerable media pundits and politicians were jumping beforeany available microphone to expound their commitment to use government to bludgeon the people in the name of countering coronavirus, a smaller group of individuals, ignored by the big money media and censored on social media, was warning of the dire consequences of the plethora of government mandates being put in place across America. Among them was libertarian communicator Ron Paul, founder and chairman of the Ron Paul Institute.

On the day of Trump’s announcement — March 16, 2020, Paul published at his Ron Paul Institute website an editorial titled “The Coronavirus Hoax.” “Government over-hypes a threat as an excuse to grab more of our freedoms,” is how Paul assessed the situation. Further noted Paul, “People should ask themselves whether this coronavirus ‘pandemic’ could be a big hoax, with the actual danger of the disease massively exaggerated by those who seek to profit – financially or politically – from the ensuing panic.” Even the claimed benefit of the coronavirus crackdown of protecting people’s health, Paul warned, was unfounded. In fact, Paul presciently warned that the government restrictions would tend to harm health, noting as an example that the “martial law” coronavirus fearmongers were dreaming about “will leave people hunkered down inside their homes instead of going outdoors or to the beach where the sunshine and fresh air would help boost immunity.” Also that day, Paul further discussed at his Ron Paul Liberty Report show his opposition to the multiplying authoritarian coronavirus measures. 

As the government crackdowns in the name of countering coronavirus continued, Paul, in his editorials, interviews, speeches, and Ron Paul Liberty Report episodes, kept challenging the many attacks on both freedom and health from various crackdown measures including mandates that people take experimental coronavirus “vaccine” shots to keep their jobs or attend school, mask mandates, vaccine passport requirements, suppression of medical information and treatments that differed from the government-advanced orthodoxy, and the forced closure of businesses, schools, churches, and other places where people otherwise would routinely 

Many more people joined in later to challenge the coronavirus crackdowns, some even just in retrospect. This is a great thing. But, a special respect is owed to individuals such as Paul who from the beginning stood against the coronavirus crackdown.


Ron Paul Challenged the Coronavirus Tyranny from the Beginning
Click on the headline to read the full story from
0 Comments

'What Event Would You Change In History?' #AskRonPaul

3/16/2023

0 Comments

 
Welcome to another edition of #AskRonPaul, where Dr. Paul tackles questions from...you! Today Dr. Paul discusses what event in history he would change, what to expect with bank collapses, and the easiest way to end the Ukraine war. Today on the Liberty Report:



'What Event Would You Change In History?' #AskRonPaul
Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity
0 Comments
<<Previous
    Picture

    Ron Paul 
      Institute  

    The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity is a special project of the Foundation for Rational Economics and Education, a non-profit established by Ron Paul in 1976.

    Picture

    Archives

    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
​FRONT PAGE •  OKLAHOMA NEWS • EDITORIAL • SOONER ISSUES •​ STATE GROUPS •​ SOONER ANALYSTS •​ LAWMAKER'S JOURNAL •​ NATION •​ NATIONAL COMMENTARY •​ CARTOONS •​ ​
Picture

918 . 928 . 7776

 SoonerPolitics.org is committed to informing & mobilizing conservative Oklahomans for civic reform & restored liberty. We seeks to utilize the efforts of all cooperative facets of the Conservative movement... Content of the diverse columns are solely at the discretion of the dozens of websites who create the content.   David Van Risseghem  is the founder of this platform.
 Sooner Politics News is a platform, not a media site. All our bloggers get their feeds promoted regardless of content. As soon as We suppress or delete even one posting, we become an endorser of whatever We didn't censor..The publisher doesn't (and could not) logically agree with all the content, so we would not expect any rational reader to agree, either. What we do hope, is that readers will think for themselves, and at least be better informed of the issues, events, and values that our citizen journalists work hard to provide for free.. We automate much of the tasks so that our sources' content gets as much exposure as possible. We encourage constructive discussion & debate. The solution is more free speech, not less.​

  • Front Page
  • Oklahoma News
    • Oklahoma Reports
    • OCPAC
    • Oklahoma Constitution News
    • Citizen of the Year
    • Oklahoma History
    • Today, In History
    • Oklahoma Center Square
    • Faked Out Sports
    • AP Wire
    • NewsBreak Oklahoma
    • Inside the Capitol
    • Lawton Rocks
    • Muskogee Now
    • OSU Sports
  • Podcasts
  • SPTV
    • Fresh Black Coffee, with Eddie Huff
    • AircraftSparky
    • Red River TV
    • Oklahoma TV
    • E PLURIBUS OTAP
    • Tapp's Common Sense
  • Editorial
    • From the Editor
    • Weekend Report
    • 3D Politics
    • Reagan Speaks
  • Sooner Issues
    • Corruption Chronicle
    • Constitutional Grounds
    • State Groups
  • Sooner Analysts
    • OCPA
    • Muskogee Politico
    • Rooke Report
    • SoonerPoll
    • Everett Piper
    • Andrew Spiropoulos
    • Tulsa Devil's Advocate
    • Eddie Huff & Friends
    • 1889 Institute
    • Steve Byas
    • Michael Bates
    • Steve Fair
    • Josh Lewis
    • Tulsa Today
    • OK2A
    • Dr. Jim Meehan
    • AFP Oklahoma
    • Sooner Tea Party
  • Nation
    • Bongino Report
    • Breitbart News
    • Daily wire
    • Steven Crowder
    • InfoWars News
    • Jeff Davis
    • Alex Lains
    • The F1rst
    • Nigel Farage
    • NewsMax
    • America's Voice
    • Ron Paul Institute
    • Bill Gertz
    • Emerald
    • Just the News
    • Trey Gowdy
    • Fox Politics
    • National Commentary
  • Wit & Whimsy
    • Libs of Tiktok
    • It's Still The Law
    • Terrence Williams
    • Witty Cartoons
    • Will Rogers Said
    • Steeple Chasers
    • The Partisan
    • Satire
  • SoonerPolitics.org