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FTR #1126 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: We begin a series of programs highlighting various aspects of the “three-dimensional chess” aspect of the Covid-19 “bio-psy-op” we feel is underway. Actually six or seven dimensional chess might be a better way of expressing this analytical concept.
It is of paramount importance for listeners/readers to understand that the conceptual breakdown is for cognitive clarity only. The bio-psy-op” is multi-dimensional in its entirety and must be understood to be a type of “fascist/totalitarian lasagna” with many layers to be consumed.
In this program, we present ways in which the Covid-19 outbreak is subverting democracy, both inside and outside of the United States.
Although he has only flirted with exercising them, to date, Trump does indeed have some emergency powers that can be invoked to further his agenda” ” . . . . The most notable aspect of presidential emergency action documents might be their extreme secrecy. It’s not uncommon for the government to classify its plans or activities in the area of national security. . . . By contrast, we know of no evidence that the executive branch has ever consulted with Congress — or even informed any of its members — regarding the contents of presidential emergency action documents. . . . That is a dangerous state of affairs. The coronavirus pandemic is fast becoming the most serious crisis to face this country since World War II. And it is happening under the watch of a president who has claimed that Article II of the Constitution gives him ‘the right to do whatever I want.’ It is not far-fetched to think that we might see the deployment of these documents for the first time and that they will assert presidential powers beyond those granted by Congress or recognized by the courts as flowing from the Constitution. . . .”
Next, we add that the Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse is spawning totalitarian manifestations–not surprisingly–at the Department of Justice headed by “ex” CIA officer William Barr. ” . . . . The request raised eyebrows because of its potential implications for habeas corpus — the constitutional right to appear before a judge after arrest and seek release. ‘Not only would it be a violation of that, but it says ‘affecting pre-arrest,’” said Norman L. Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. ‘So that means you could be arrested and never brought before a judge until they decide that the emergency or the civil disobedience is over. I find it absolutely terrifying. Especially in a time of emergency, we should be very careful about granting new powers to the government.’ . . .”
It will come as no surprise to veteran listeners, the Pentagon has contingency plans for varying degrees of governmental and/or civic disability. ” . . . . But Coronavirus is also new territory, where the military itself is vulnerable and the disaster scenarios being contemplated — including the possibility of widespread domestic violence as a result of food shortages — are forcing planners to look at what are called ‘extraordinary circumstances’. Above-Top Secret contingency plans already exist for what the military is supposed to do if all the Constitutional successors are incapacitated. Standby orders were issued more than three weeks ago to ready these plans, not just to protect Washington but also to prepare for the possibility of some form of martial law. . . .”
The military’s contingency plans have been partially activated: ” . . . . While being hit with coronavirus at rates equivalent to the civilian population, the U.S. military has activated its ‘defense support of civil authorities’ apparatus, establishing liaisons in all 50 states, activating units and command posts, and moving forces to provide medical, transportation, logistics, and communications support in New York and Washington states. Lt. Gen. Laura Richardson, the command of Army North (ARNORTH), has requested and received approval for the deployment of ground units in response to the now declared national emergency. . . .”
We note, in passing, that, although not in effect at this point, discussion of “martial law” are far more than just social media fodder, to coin a term. ” . . . . Because of so many rumors flying in social media, the Pentagon established a ‘rumor control’ website to beat down stories of military-imposed quarantines and even martial law. And it said it was going to limit details of both the specific numbers of coronavirus cases and operational details. . . .”
Martial law discussion has been spurred by, among other things, Trump’s ruminations about what he can and will do: “. . . . Earlier Saturday, Mr. Trump said that he is considering declaring an ‘enforceable’ quarantine affecting some residents of the New York metropolitan area, possibly including New Jersey and Connecticut. He called the region a ‘hot spot’ of the coronavirus outbreak sweeping the country. . . . Mr. Trump reiterated in his remarks before the send off of the USNS Comfort that he was considering a quarantine of the area. The Comfort is a naval hospital boat which is carrying over 1,000 beds and 1,200 medical personnel to New York City. . . . Using active duty troops to enforce a quarantine would require the president to suspend the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the use of the armed services for law enforcement. . . .”
Trump has plenty of company: ” . . . . In Hungary, a new law has granted Prime Minister Viktor Orban the power to sidestep Parliament and suspend existing laws. Mr. Orban, who declared a state of emergency this month, now has the sole power to end the emergency. Parliament, where two-thirds of the seats are controlled by his party, approved the legislation on Monday. . . .‘The draft law is alarming,’ said Daniel Karsai, a lawyer in Budapest who said the new legislation had created ‘a big fear’ among Hungarians that ‘the Orban administration will be a real dictatorship.’ . . .”
Orban’s Hungary has been joined by, among others, the long-standing British democracy: ” . . . . some of the provisions . . . . will give the government unchecked control. The legislation gives sweeping powers to border agents and the police, which could lead to indefinite detention and reinforce ‘hostile environment’ policies against immigrants, critics said. ‘Each clause could have had months of debate, and instead it’s all being debated in a few days,’ said Adam Wagner, a lawyer who advises a parliamentary committee on human rights. . . . ‘These are eye-watering powers that would have not been really imaginable in peacetime in this country before,’ said Silkie Carlo, the director of Big Brother Watch, a rights group. She called the measures ‘draconian.’ . . . .”
Privacy is being dramatically curtailed under cover of combatting the virus: ” . . . . As Thomas Gaulkin of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists noted earlier this month, many Americans— often fierce in their objections to perceived government overreach into their lives—might normally object to dystopian images of flying robots policing lockdowns. But these, of course, are not normal times. ‘If drones do begin to hover over U.S. streets to help control this pandemic,’ Gaulkin wrote, ‘it will be yet another visible reminder that we’ve entered a public health Twilight Zone where Americans have no better option than to embrace what was once only imaginable, and never real.’ . . . ”
The alpha predator of the electronic surveillance landscape is Peter Thiel’s Palantir. They have landed two key government contracts in connection with the Covid-19 outbreak:” . . . . Palantir, the $20 billion-valued Palo Alto tech company backed by Facebook-funder Peter Thiel, has been handed a $17.3 million contract with one of the leading health bodies leading the charge against COVID-19. It’s the biggest contract handed to a Silicon Valley company to assist America’s COVID-19 response, according to Forbes’ review of public contracts, and comes as other Californian giants like Apple and Google try to figure out how best to help governments fight the deadly virus. . . . The money, from the federal government’s COVID-19 relief fund, is for Palantir Gotham licenses, according to a contract record reviewed by Forbes. That technology is designed to draw in data from myriad sources and, regardless of what form or size, turn the information into a coherent whole. The ‘platform’ is customized for each client, so it meets with their mission needs, according to Palantir. . . . Palantir Gotham is slightly different to Foundry, a newer product that’s aimed more at general users rather than data science whizzes, with more automation than Gotham. As Forbes previously reported, Foundry is being used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to ingest information from all manner of hospitals across America to see where best to provide more or less resource. . . . Palantir is now working with at least 12 governments on their responses to coronavirus, according to two sources with knowledge of its COVID-19 work. That includes the U.K.’s National Health Service, which is using Foundry for similar purposes as the CDC. . . .”
Exemplifying the multi-dimensional chess scenario in connection with the “bio-psy-op” is the GOP’s plan to use the Covid-19 outbreak to scapegoat China and tar the Democrats and Joe Biden with the same brush. Of particular note in this regard is the Steve Bannon‑J. Kyle Bass-Tommy Hicks, Jr. triumvirate discussed in–among other programs–FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112.
At the epicenter of the anti-China effort, Bannon is networked with Bass, who is asymmetrically invested with regard to the Hong Kong and Chinese economies. Hicks, in turn, is a co-investor with Bass, co-chairman of the RNC, and one of the prime movers of the interagency governmental networks involved in the anti-China destabilization operation. This networked relationship affords investors like Bass and Hicks the ultimate position from which to profit from “insider” information.
The synthesis of covert operations and electoral politics reminds us of the 1952 election, in which Arthur Bliss Lane occupied a key position in the Crusade For Freedom, as well as the GOP. (We discussed this in AFA #37, and utilized information from, among other sources, Blowback by Christopher Simpson.
Exemplary, as well, of the bio-psy-op as synthesis of covert operation and political crusading is the GOP’s cynical manipulation of emergency appropriations to achieve their longstanding objective of crippling state and local governments, as well as driving the Postal Service into bankruptcy. Privatizing postal service has been a right-wing/GOP objective for a long time. ” . . . . Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows what is really happening: McConnell is trying to get more money for businesses while continuing to shortchange state and local governments. After all, “starve the beast” — forcing governments to cut services by depriving them of resources — has been Republican strategy for decades. This is just more of the same. . . . Oh, and Trump personally has ruled out aid for the Postal Service. . . .”
1a. Although he has only flirted with exercising them, to date, Trump does indeed have some emergency powers that can be invoked to further his agenda” ” . . . . The most notable aspect of presidential emergency action documents might be their extreme secrecy. It’s not uncommon for the government to classify its plans or activities in the area of national security. . . . By contrast, we know of no evidence that the executive branch has ever consulted with Congress — or even informed any of its members — regarding the contents of presidential emergency action documents. . . . That is a dangerous state of affairs. The coronavirus pandemic is fast becoming the most serious crisis to face this country since World War II. And it is happening under the watch of a president who has claimed that Article II of the Constitution gives him ‘the right to do whatever I want.’ It is not far-fetched to think that we might see the deployment of these documents for the first time and that they will assert presidential powers beyond those granted by Congress or recognized by the courts as flowing from the Constitution. . . .”
The past few weeks have given Americans a crash course in the powers that federal, state and local governments wield during emergencies. We’ve seen businesses closed down, citizens quarantined and travel restricted. When President Trump declared emergencies on March 13 under both the Stafford Act and the National Emergencies Act, he boasted, “I have the right to do a lot of things that people don’t even know about.”
The president is right. Some of the most potent emergency powers at his disposal are likely ones we can’t know about, because they are not contained in any publicly available laws. Instead, they are set forth in classified documents known as “presidential emergency action documents.”
These documents consist of draft proclamations, executive orders and proposals for legislation that can be quickly deployed to assert broad presidential authority in a range of worst-case scenarios. They are one of the government’s best-kept secrets. No presidential emergency action document has ever been released or even leaked. And it appears that none has ever been invoked.
Given the real possibility that these documents could make their first appearance in the coronavirus crisis, Congress should insist on having full access to them to ensure that they are consistent with the Constitution and basic principles of democracy.
Presidential emergency action documents emerged during the Eisenhower administration as a set of plans to provide for continuity of government after a Soviet nuclear attack. Over time, they were expanded to include proposed responses to other types of emergencies. As described in one declassified government memorandum, they are designed “to implement extraordinary presidential authority in response to extraordinary situations.”
Other government documents have revealed some of the actions that older presidential emergency action documents — those issued up through the 1970s — purported to authorize. These include suspension of habeas corpus by the president (not by Congress, as assigned in the Constitution), detention of United States citizens who are suspected of being “subversives,” warrantless searches and seizures and the imposition of martial law.
Some of these actions would seem unconstitutional, at least in the absence of authorization by Congress. Past presidential emergency action documents, however, have tested the line of how far presidents’ constitutional authority may stretch in an emergency.
For example, a Department of Justice memorandum from the Lyndon B. Johnson administration discusses a presidential emergency action document that would impose censorship on news sent abroad. The memo notes that while no “express statutory authority” exists for such a measure, “it can be argued that these actions would be legal in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear attack based on the president’s constitutional powers to preserve the national security.” It then recommends that the president seek ratifying legislation from Congress after issuing the orders.
Much less is known about the contents of more recent presidential emergency action documents — but we do know they exist. They undergo periodic revision to take into account new laws, conditions and concerns. The Department of Justice reviews the proposed changes for legal soundness, the Federal Emergency Management Agency plays a coordinating role and the National Security Council provides policy direction and final approval.
Based on budgetary requests from the Department of Justice to Congress and other documents, it appears that presidential emergency action documents were revised in the late 1980s, in the 2000s and again starting in 2012 and continuing into the Trump administration. The latest numbers available suggest there are between 50 and 60 such documents in existence.
There is no question that presidential emergency action documents could be used in a pandemic like that caused by the coronavirus. A 2006 Nuclear Regulatory Commission memorandum addressed that agency’s plan under President Bush’s 2005 “National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza.” The concern was how to maintain operations in response to a pandemic that proved to be “persistent, widespread, and prolonged.” The memo’s authors offered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 14 bullet points of actions, including to “review presidential emergency action documents” and “select those most likely to be needed” by the commission.
The most notable aspect of presidential emergency action documents might be their extreme secrecy. It’s not uncommon for the government to classify its plans or activities in the area of national security. However, even the most sensitive military operations or intelligence activities must be reported to at least some members of Congress. By contrast, we know of no evidence that the executive branch has ever consulted with Congress — or even informed any of its members — regarding the contents of presidential emergency action documents.
That is a dangerous state of affairs. The coronavirus pandemic is fast becoming the most serious crisis to face this country since World War II. And it is happening under the watch of a president who has claimed that Article II of the Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want.” It is not far-fetched to think that we might see the deployment of these documents for the first time and that they will assert presidential powers beyond those granted by Congress or recognized by the courts as flowing from the Constitution.
Even in the most dire of emergencies, the president of the United States should not be able to operate free from constitutional checks and balances. The coronavirus crisis should serve as a wake-up call. Presidential emergency action documents have managed to escape democratic oversight for nearly 70 years. Congress should move quickly to remedy that omission and assert its authority to review these documents, before we all learn just how far this administration believes the president’s powers reach.
Elizabeth Goitein is a co-director and Andrew Boyle is a lawyer at the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.
1b. The Bio-Psy-Op Apocalypse is spawning totalitarian manifestations, including–not surprisingly–at the Department of Justice headed by “ex” CIA officer William Barr.
The Justice Department has quietly asked Congress for the ability to ask chief judges to detain people indefinitely without trial during emergencies — part of a push for new powers that comes as the novel coronavirus spreads throughout the United States.
Documents reviewed by POLITICO detail the department’s requests to lawmakers on a host of topics, including the statute of limitations, asylum and the way court hearings are conducted. POLITICO also reviewed and previously reported on documents seeking the authority to extend deadlines on merger reviews and prosecutions.
…
The move has tapped into a broader fear among civil liberties advocates and Donald Trump’s critics — that the president will use a moment of crisis to push for controversial policy changes. Already, he has cited the pandemic as a reason for heightening border restrictions and restricting asylum claims. He has also pushed for further tax cuts as the economy withers, arguing it would soften the financial blow to Americans. And even without policy changes, Trump has vast emergency powers that he could deploy right now to try to slow the coronavirus outbreak.
The DOJ requests — which are unlikely to make it through a Democratic-led House — span several stages of the legal process, from initial arrest to how cases are processed and investigated.
In one of the documents, the department proposed that Congress grant the attorney general power to ask the chief judge of any district court to pause court proceedings “whenever the district court is fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation.”
The proposal would also grant those top judges broad authority to pause court proceedings during emergencies. It would apply to “any statutes or rules of procedure otherwise affecting pre-arrest, post-arrest, pre-trial, trial, and post-trial procedures in criminal and juvenile proceedings and all civil process and proceedings,” according to draft legislative language the department shared with Congress. In making the case for the change, the DOJ wrote that individual judges can currently pause proceedings during emergencies but that their proposal would make sure all judges in any particular district could handle emergencies “in a consistent manner.”
The request raised eyebrows because of its potential implications for habeas corpus — the constitutional right to appear before a judge after arrest and seek release.
“Not only would it be a violation of that, but it says ‘affecting pre-arrest,’” said Norman L. Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “So that means you could be arrested and never brought before a judge until they decide that the emergency or the civil disobedience is over. I find it absolutely terrifying. Especially in a time of emergency, we should be very careful about granting new powers to the government.”
Reimer said the possibility of chief judges suspending all court rules during an emergency without a clear end in sight was deeply disturbing.
“That is something that should not happen in a democracy,” he said.
The department also asked Congress to pause the statute of limitations for criminal investigations and civil proceedings during national emergencies, “and for one year following the end of the national emergency,” according to the draft legislative text.
Trump recently declared the coronavirus crisis a national emergency.
Another controversial request: The department is looking to change the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure in some cases to expand the use of videoconference hearings and to let some of those hearings happen without defendants’ consent, according to the draft legislative text.
“Video teleconferencing may be used to conduct an appearance under this rule,” read a draft of potential new language for Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 5(f), crossing out the phrase “if the defendant consents.”
“Video teleconferencing may be used to arraign a defendant,” read draft text of rule 10©, again striking out the phrase “if the defendant consents.”
Reimer said forcing people to have hearings over video rather than in person would threaten civil liberties.
“If it were with the consent of the accused person it would be fine,” he said. “But if it’s not with the consent of the accused person, it’s a terrible road to go down. We have a right to public trials. People have a right to be present in court.”
The department also wants Congress to change the law to explicitly say that people with COVID-19 — the illness caused by the novel coronavirus — are not included among those who may apply for asylum. And the department asked for the same change regarding people who are “subject to a presidential proclamation suspending and limiting the entry of aliens into the United States,” according to the draft legislative language.
Layli Miller-Muro, the CEO of the Tahirih Justice Center, which advocates for women and girls fleeing violence, said the language would block anyone on a presidential travel ban list from seeking asylum in the U.S.
“I think it’s a humanitarian tragedy that fails to recognize that vulnerable people from those countries are among the most persecuted and that protecting them is exactly what the refugee convention was designed to do,” she said.
The asylum request comes as the Trump administration says it will begin denying entry to all migrants illegally crossing the U.S. southern border, including those seeking asylum.
“I hope we come out of this with a sense of oneness, interconnectedness,” Miller-Muro said of the coronavirus pandemic. “Borders can’t protect us. Viruses do not care.”
2. It will come as no surprise to veteran listeners, the Pentagon has contingency plans for varying degrees of governmental and/or civic disability. ” . . . . But Coronavirus is also new territory, where the military itself is vulnerable and the disaster scenarios being contemplated — including the possibility of widespread domestic violence as a result of food shortages — are forcing planners to look at what are called ‘extraordinary circumstances’. Above-Top Secret contingency plans already exist for what the military is supposed to do if all the Constitutional successors are incapacitated. Standby orders were issued more than three weeks ago to ready these plans, not just to protect Washington but also to prepare for the possibility of some form of martial law. . . .”
Even as President Trump says he tested negative for coronavirus, the COVID-19 pandemic raises the fear that huge swaths of the executive branch or even Congress and the Supreme Court could also be disabled, forcing the implementation of “continuity of government” plans that include evacuating Washington and “devolving” leadership to second-tier officials in remote and quarantined locations.
But Coronavirus is also new territory, where the military itself is vulnerable and the disaster scenarios being contemplated — including the possibility of widespread domestic violence as a result of food shortages — are forcing planners to look at what are called “extraordinary circumstances”.
Above-Top Secret contingency plans already exist for what the military is supposed to do if all the Constitutional successors are incapacitated. Standby orders were issued more than three weeks ago to ready these plans, not just to protect Washington but also to prepare for the possibility of some form of martial law.
According to new documents and interviews with military experts, the various plans – codenamed Octagon, Freejack and Zodiac – are the underground laws to ensure government continuity. They are so secret that under these extraordinary plans, “devolution” could circumvent the normal Constitutional provisions for government succession, and military commanders could be placed in control around America.
“We’re in new territory,” says one senior officer, the entire post‑9/11 paradigm of emergency planning thrown out the window. The officer jokes, in the kind of morbid humor characteristic of this slow-moving disaster, that America had better learn who Gen. Terrence J. O’Shaughnessy is.
He is the “combatant commander” for the United States and would in theory be in charge if Washington were eviscerated. That is, until a new civilian leader could be installed.
‘We’re in territory we’ve never been in before’
What happens, government expert Norman Ornstein asked last week, if so many members of Congress come down with the coronavirus that the legislature cannot meet or cannot muster a quorum? After 9/11, Ornstein and others, alarmed by how little Washington had prepared for such possibilities, created a bipartisan Continuity of Government Commission to examine precisely these and other possibilities.
It has been a two-decade long futile effort, Ornstein says, with Congress uninterested or unable to either pass new laws or create working procedures that would allow emergency and remote operations. The rest of the federal government equally is unprepared to operate if a pandemic were to hit the very people called upon to lead in an emergency. That is why for the first time, other than planning for the aftermath of a nuclear war, extraordinary procedures are being contemplated.
In the past, almost every imagined contingency associated with emergency preparedness has assumed civil and military assistance coming from the outside. One military officer involved in continuity planning calls it a “cavalry” mentality: that military assistance is requested or ordered after local civil authority has been exhausted.
“There might not be an outside,” the officer says, asking that she not be named because she is speaking about sensitive matters.
In recognition of the equal vulnerability of military forces, the Pentagon has instituted unprecedented restrictions on off-base travel. Last Wednesday it restricted most overseas travel for 60 days, and then on Friday issued supplemental domestic guidance that essentially keeps all uniformed personnel on or near military bases. There are exceptions, including travel that is “mission-essential,” the Pentagon says.
Mission essential in this regard applies to the maze of more than a dozen different secret assignments, most of them falling under three larger contingency plans:
- CONPLAN 3400, or the military’s plan for “homeland defense,” if America itself is a battlefield.
- CONPLAN 3500, “defense support of civil authorities,” where the military assists in an emergency short of armed attack on the nation.
- CONPLAN 3600, military operations in the National Capital Region and continuation of government, under which the most-secret plans to support continuity are nested.
All of these plans are the responsibility of U.S. Northern Command (or NORTHCOM), the homeland defense military authority created after 9/11. Air Force General O’Shaughnessy is NORTHCOM’s Colorado Springs-based commander.
On February 1, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper signed orders directing NORTHCOM to execute nationwide pandemic plans. Secretly, he signed Warning Orders (the WARNORD as it’s called) alerting NORTHCOM and a host of east coast units to “prepare to deploy” in support of potential extraordinary missions.
Seven secret plans – some highly compartmented – exist to prepare for these extraordinary missions. Three are transportation related, just to move and support the White House and the federal government as it evacuates and operates from alternate sites. The first is called the Rescue & Evacuation of the Occupants of the Executive Mansion (or RESEM) plan, responsible for protecting President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and their families–whether that means moving them at the direction of the Secret Service or, in a catastrophe, digging them out of the rubble of the White House.
The second is called the Joint Emergency Evacuation Plan (or JEEP), and it organizes transportation for the Secretary of Defense and other national security leaders so that they can leave the Washington area. The Atlas Plan is a third, moving non-military leaders – Congressional leadership, the Supreme Court and other important figures – to their emergency relocation sites. Under Atlas, a still- secret bunker would be activated and cordoned, with government operations shifting to Maryland.
The three most compartmented contingencies – Octagon, Freejack, and Zodiac – call upon various military units in Washington DC, North Carolina and eastern Maryland to defend government operations if there is a total breakdown. The seventh plan – codenamed Granite Shadow – lays out the playbook for extraordinary domestic missions that involve weapons of mass destruction. (I disclosed the existence of this plan in 2005, and its associated “national mission force”–a force that is on alert at all times, even in peacetime, to respond to a terrorist attack or threat with the nuclear weapon.)
Most of these plans have been quietly activated during presidential inaugurals and State of the Union addresses, the centrality of the weapons of mass destruction scenario seen in the annual Capital Shield exercise in Washington. Last year’s exercise posited a WMD attack on Metro Station. Military sources say that only the massive destruction caused by a nuclear device – or the enormous loss of life that could be caused by a biological agent – present catastrophic pressure great enough to justify movement into extra-Constitutional actions and extraordinary circumstances plans.
“WMD is such an important scenario,” a former NORTHCOM commander told me, “not because it is the greatest risk, but because it stresses the system most severely.”
According to another senior retired officer, who told me about Granite Shadow and is now working as a defense contractor, the national mission force goes out on its missions with “special authorities” pre-delegated by the president and the attorney general. These special authorities are needed because under regulations and the law, federal military forces can supplant civil authority or engage in law enforcement only under the strictest conditions.
When might the military’s “emergency authority” be needed? Traditionally, it’s thought of after a nuclear device goes off in an American city. But now, planners are looking at military response to urban violence as people seek protection and fight over food. And, according to one senior officer, in the contingency of the complete evacuation of Washington.
Under Defense department regulations, military commanders are authorized to take action on their own – in extraordinary circumstances – where “duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation.” The conditions include “large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances” involving “significant loss of life or wanton destruction of property.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff codified these rules in October 2018, reminding commanders that they could decide, on their own authority, to “engage temporarily” in military control in circumstances “where prior authorization by the President is impossible” or where local authorities “are unable to control the situation.” A new Trump-era Pentagon directive calls it “extreme situations.” In all cases, even where a military commander declares martial law, the directives say that civil rule has to be restored as soon as possible.
“In scenarios where one city or one region is devastated, that’s a pretty straightforward process,” the military planner told me. “But with coronavirus, where the effect is nationwide, we’re in territory we’ve never been in before.”
An extended period of devolution
Continuity of government and protection of the presidency began in the Eisenhower administration with the possibility emerging that Washington could be obliterated in an atomic attack. The need to plan for a nuclear decision-maker to survive even a direct attack led to the building of bunkers and a maze of secret procedures and exceptions, many of which are still followed to this day. Congress was also folded in – at least Congressional leadership – to ensure that there would always be a Constitutional successor. And then the Supreme Court was added.
Before 9/11, continuity and emergency programs were broadened beyond nuclear war preparedness, particularly as hurricanes began to have such devastating effects on modern urban society. And because of the advent of pandemics, broadly beginning with the Avian Influenza, civil agencies responsible for national security, such as the Department of Health and Human Services, which is the lead agency to respond to coronavirus, were also brought into continuity protection.
Despite well-honed plans and constant testing over 30 years, the attacks of September 11, 2001 severely tested all aspects of continuity movement and communications. Many of the procedures written down on paper were either ignored or thrown out the window. As a result, continuity had a second coming, billions spent by the new Department of Homeland and the other national security agencies to ensure that the Washington leadership could communicate and move, a whole new system established to be ready if a terrorist attack came without warning. Bunkers, many shuttered at the end of the Cold War, were reopened and expanded. Befitting the panic at the time, and the atomic legacy, the most extraordinary planning scenario posited a terrorist attack that would involve an improvised nuclear or radiological dispersal device in a major American city.
The terrorist attack scenario dominated until 2006, when the disastrous government response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans shifted federal government preparedness to formally adopt an “all-hazards” system. Civil agencies, the 50 states and local communities – particularly large cities – all began to synchronize emergency preparedness with common protocols. U.S. Northern Command was created to harness military assistance in domestic disasters, it’s three overarching contingency plans the product now of 15 years of trial and error.
3. The military’s contingency plans have been partially activated:
While being hit with coronavirus at rates equivalent to the civilian population, the U.S. military has activated its “defense support of civil authorities” apparatus, establishing liaisons in all 50 states, activating units and command posts, and moving forces to provide medical, transportation, logistics, and communications support in New York and Washington states.
Lt. Gen. Laura Richardson, the command of Army North (ARNORTH), has requested and received approval for the deployment of ground units in response to the now declared national emergency. The moves begin to implement two existing contingency plans—CONPLAN 3400 for “homeland defense” and CONPLAN 3500 for “defense support of civil authorities”—as well as numerous new orders specifically relating to coronavirus. Fourteen states have also appointed “dual-status commanders,” presidentially-approved National Guard officers who serve in both state and federal chains of command, with another 20 states to follow.
The Pentagon announced that the first dual-status commanders had been appointed in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Washington.
“The role of the dual-status commander is that he works for two different principals through two different chains of command,” says Army Maj. Gen. Giselle Wilz, head of the National Guard Bureau’s strategic plans and policy directorate. The dual-status commanders will report to Gen. Richardson as well as to the governors of each state.That is, except for Hawaii. That dual-status commander reports to U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC) – an organization of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command that is responsible for Hawaii and the Pacific territories.
The federal military response, never before activated on a nationwide scale, is a patchwork of complex organizational schemes. While Gen. Richardson is the commander of the Joint Forces Land Component Command of U.S. Northern Command for all federal (and dual-status) ground troops in the continental United States and Alaska, USARPAC is in charge in the Pacific, reporting to NORTHCOM just as Gen. Richardson does. As “maritime” assets, the two hospital ships—the USNS Comfort and the USNS Mercy, now in Los Angeles and New York—are also under a separate command, the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command, which also serves as Naval Forces North (NAVNORTH) and the Joint Forces Maritime Component Commander for North America. And still another command, Marine Forces North (MARFORNORTH) operates side-by-side with ARNORTH, in charge of Marine Corps troops.
In total, Army North has deployed approximately 1,100 active duty servicemembers assigned to specific units, and they started moving to New York and Washington states immediately after they were assigned. The active duty units deployed include:
- Joint Task Force-Civil Support Headquarters, Fort Eustis, Virginia
- 3rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina
- 4th Sustainment Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colorado
- 63rd Expeditionary Signal Battalion, Fort Stewart, Georgia
Joint Task Force-Civil Support was established in 1999 as the domestic response authority in case involving weapons of mass destruction—chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN). According to its website, “when directed, JTF-CS will deploy to an incident site, establish command and control of Department of Defense forces, and provide military assistance and support to civil authorities by saving lives, preventing further injury and providing temporary critical support to enable community recovery.”
But its secondary mission is what the federal government calls “all-hazards” response. “Although primarily charged with a CBRN response mission,” the Joint Task Force says, it “could be directed to respond to a natural or man-made disaster if asked to do so by U.S. Northern Command.“
On March 28th, Gen. Richardson also announced that four U.S. Army Reserve units would be called to active duty to support the federal response:
- Task Force 76 Headquarters, formed by the 76th Operational Response Command, Salt Lake City, Utah
- 377th Theater Sustainment Command Headquarters, New Orleans, Louisiana.
- 4th Expeditionary Sustainment Command Headquarters, San Antonio, Texas.
- 505th Military Intelligence Brigade Headquarters, San Antonio, Texas.
To align with the ten FEMA regions responsible for emergency management, Army North has also activated its ten Defense Coordinating Offices, senior Colonels who are embedded with each regional command center. These are a specialized planning cells that serve as military liaisons to coordinate federal assistance. Another 100 Emergency Preparedness Liaison Officers are also now active, augmenting the Defense Coordination cells.
In announcing the activation and movement of forces, Army North was careful to specify that none of the units “will ... directly participate in civilian law enforcement activities.”
Similarly, Air Force Maj. Gen. Joseph Lengyel, chief of the National Guard Bureau and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: “I’m hearing unfounded rumors about National Guard troops supporting a nationwide quarantine. Let me be clear: There has been no such discussion.”
Because of so many rumors flying in social media, the Pentagon established a “rumor control” website to beat down stories of military-imposed quarantines and even martial law. And it said it was going to limit details of both the specific numbers of coronavirus cases and operational details.
“Unit level readiness data for key military forces is information that is classified as a risk to operational security and could jeopardize operations and/or deterrence,” Alyssa Farah, the Pentagon’s press secretary, told Military Times. “If at some point in the future, a commander believes that the coronavirus could affect the readiness of our strategic deterrent or strategic response forces we would understandably protect that information from public release and falling into the hands of our adversaries―as we expect they would do the same.”
As of March 31, the Defense Department reported 1204 confirmed active cases of coronavirus throughout its community: 673 servicemembers, 247 civilians working for the military, 212 family members and 72 contractors. . . .
4. Trump floated the idea of a federally enforced quarantine of the New York metro area, along with New Jersey and parts of Connecticut. A federally enforced quarantine. It appeared Trump was proposing using the military to ensure no one leaves New York City, something that would require suspending the Posse Comitatus Act. That was what he tweeted about earlier on Saturday and later talked about during a press conference on the White House lawn and reiterated that it was under considering during a speech on the Naval hospital ship the USNS Comfort. Trump decided to make a big point to the public on a military ship that he was considering sending in the military to quarantine the tri-state area.
Declaring on Saturday that he decided a quarantine wasn’t necessary, Trump issued a “severe travel advisory” instead. The idea is now out there. Federally quarantining large cities with the military is now going to be one of things Trump is considering in order to seem like a ‘strong wartime leader’. Going ‘to war’ against New York City’s spread of the Chinese virus. That’s now part of his ‘being a wartime president’ theatrical repertoire.
The push for enforceably quarantining large (predominantly Democrat-controlled) metro areas hasn’t been limited to Trump. It was apparently Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis who put the idea of a federal quarantine for New York City in Trump’s head. DeSantis – who is now infamous for deciding to allow Florida’s beaches to remain open as Spring Break partiers filled Florida’s beaches before scattering back across the world – has apparently decided to make New York City residents the main villain as his state becomes the new national ‘hot spot’ for COVID-19 cases. So when Trump pushed this idea, he was implicitly running political cover or DeSantis as Florida becomes a global COVID-19 infection vector.
Perceived political necessity to deflect political outrage over the COVID-19 outbreaks in ‘Red states’ may manifest in every state to some extent–will we see a nationwide GOP call for quarantining New York and California? Perhaps the American far right can use this as an excuse to use the military to turn US cities into giant prisons and act like they’re defending against a foreign invader. All of the ‘Patriot’ personalities that dominate modern right-wing American discourse like Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson can explain to their growing audiences why suspending Posse Comitatus is required to defend against the New World Order’s viral invasion and this isn’t at all like the martial law scenarios they’ve spent decades warning their audiences against. ‘Blame it on New York (and/or California) and the Chinese virus’ can become the rallying cry of GOP officials for the rest of the election season. The higher the number of COVID-19 cases in ‘Red state’ America, the greater the calls for calling in the army to quarantine New York and eventually California. It’s like some sort of alternative Serpent’s Walk Nazi dream scenario playing out. So when Trump floated this idea it wasn’t just the random musings of an addled mind. It was the strategic musings of an addled mind that warns of many more musings about federal quarantines of large cities because a fascist dream scenario is taking shape.
Hours after President Trump said he was considering an “enforceable” quarantine of all residents who leave the New York metro area, including possibly parts of New Jersey and Connecticut, Mr. Trump tweeted that a “quarantine will not be necessary.” Mr. Trump tweeted that he has asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state governors to create a “travel advisory.”
Earlier Saturday, Mr. Trump said that he is considering declaring an “enforceable” quarantine affecting some residents of the New York metropolitan area, possibly including New Jersey and Connecticut. He called the region a “hot spot” of the coronavirus outbreak sweeping the country.
“I am giving consideration to a QUARANTINE of developing ‘hot spots’, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. A decision will be made, one way or another, shortly,” Mr. Trump tweeted Saturday afternoon.
Speaking to reporters on the White House South Lawn, Mr. Trump told reporters that he had spoken to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis about the pandemic. Mr. Trump said DeSantis, a Republican, told the president that he wanted to stop the flow of New Yorkers who may be infected with the new COVID-19 virus into the state.
“We’d like to see New York quarantined because it’s a hotspot — New York, New Jersey, maybe one or two other places, certain parts of Connecticut quarantined. I’m thinking about that right now,” Mr. Trump said. “We might not have to do it but there’s a possibility that sometime today we’ll do a quarantine — short-term two weeks for New York, probably New Jersey and parts of Connecticut.”
Mr. Trump also said “I’ll speak to the governor about it later.”
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said a few hours later on CNN that he had not spoken to Mr. Trump about a quarantine, but said it would be a “preposterous idea.”
“I don’t believe that any federal administration could be serious about physical lockdowns of states or parts of states across this country,” Cuomo said. “I don’t believe it’s legal. I think it would be economic chaos. I don’t think the American people would stand for it and I think it makes absolutely no sense and I don’t believe any professional would support it.”
Mr. Trump reiterated in his remarks before the send off of the USNS Comfort that he was considering a quarantine of the area. The Comfort is a naval hospital boat which is carrying over 1,000 beds and 1,200 medical personnel to New York City.
“I am now considering, and will make a decision very quickly, very shortly, a quarantine, because it’s such a hot area,” Mr. Trump said. “We’ll be announcing that one way or another fairly soon.”
Mr. Trump also said that the quarantine would not affect truck drivers passing through the region, or trade in anyway.
The chief of the National Guard, General Joseph Lengel, has said there is no consideration being given to using the military to enforce a quarantine. However, he has also said that the National Guard troops called up by state governors can be used to support law enforcement operations — but they are under control of the governor.
Using active duty troops to enforce a quarantine would require the president to suspend the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the use of the armed services for law enforcement.
Cuomo, a Democrat, told reporters shortly after Mr. Trump’s first remarks on it that he had not spoken to the president about quarantining the metro region. Cuomo also said he didn’t know what an enforceable quarantine means, but “I don’t even like the sound of it.”
“I don’t even know what that means. I don’t know how that could be legally enforceable. And from a medical point of view, I don’t know what you’d be accomplishing,” Cuomo said.
The governor added that there were no geographical constraints when the state required people in the city of New Rochelle to stay home.
“So we never set any geographic constraints, right? Mandatory quarantine is a scary concept, because it sounds like you’re saying to people can’t leave this district. We never did that,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo said that he spoke with Mr. Trump Saturday morning about four temporary hospital sites in New York City. Cuomo said there have been 728 deaths in New York, an increase of over 200 from the previous day. There are over 50,000 cases of coronavirus in New York alone, with New Jersey following with 8,825 cases.
Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey also said he had not received any information from the administration about a potential quarantine.
…
In a statement, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont indicated that he did not believe a federally mandated quarantine would be necessary.
“Regarding the President’s consideration of a quarantine of New York, as well as parts of Connecticut and New Jersey, our state has already called on residents to stay at home. Further, if interstate travel is absolutely necessary, our state has directed travelers to self-quarantine to prevent against further transmission of the virus,” Lamont said.
…
Meanwhile, DeSantis announced Saturday checkpoints along major interstates, such as I‑95 and I‑10, to check for drivers for New York and New Orleans.
5. Trump has plenty of company: ” . . . . In Hungary, a new law has granted Prime Minister Viktor Orban the power to sidestep Parliament and suspend existing laws. Mr. Orban, who declared a state of emergency this month, now has the sole power to end the emergency. Parliament, where two-thirds of the seats are controlled by his party, approved the legislation on Monday. . . .‘The draft law is alarming,’ said Daniel Karsai, a lawyer in Budapest who said the new legislation had created ‘a big fear’ among Hungarians that ‘the Orban administration will be a real dictatorship.’ . . .”
Orban’s Hungary has been joined by, among others, the long-standing British democracy: ” . . . . some of the provisions . . . . will give the government unchecked control. The legislation gives sweeping powers to border agents and the police, which could lead to indefinite detention and reinforce ‘hostile environment’ policies against immigrants, critics said. ‘Each clause could have had months of debate, and instead it’s all being debated in a few days,’ said Adam Wagner, a lawyer who advises a parliamentary committee on human rights. . . . ‘These are eye-watering powers that would have not been really imaginable in peacetime in this country before,’ said Silkie Carlo, the director of Big Brother Watch, a rights group. She called the measures ‘draconian.’ . . . .”
In Hungary, the prime minister can now rule by decree. In Britain, ministers have what a critic called “eye-watering” power to detain people and close borders. Israel’s prime minister has shut down courts and begun an intrusive surveillance of citizens. Chile has sent the military to public squares once occupied by protesters. Bolivia has postponed elections.
As the coronavirus pandemic brings the world to a juddering halt and anxious citizens demand action, leaders across the globe are invoking executive powers and seizing virtually dictatorial authority with scant resistance.
Governments and rights groups agree that these extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. States need new powers to shut their borders, enforce quarantines and track infected people. Many of these actions are protected under international rules, constitutional lawyers say.
But critics say some governments are using the public health crisis as cover to seize new powers that have little to do with the outbreak, with few safeguards to ensure that their new authority will not be abused.
The laws are taking swift hold across a broad range of political systems — in authoritarian states like Jordan, faltering democracies like Hungary, and traditional democracies like Britain. And there are few sunset provisions to ensure that the powers will be rescinded once the threat passes.
“We could have a parallel epidemic of authoritarian and repressive measures following close if not on the heels of a health epidemic,” said Fionnuala Ni Aolain, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights.
As the new laws broaden state surveillance, allow governments to detain people indefinitely and infringe on freedoms of assembly and expression, they could also shape civic life, politics and economies for decades to come.
The pandemic is already redefining norms. Invasive surveillance systems in South Korea and Singapore, which would have invited censure under normal circumstances, have been praised for slowing infections. Governments that initially criticized China for putting millions of its citizens under lockdown have since followed suit.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has authorized his country’s internal security agency to track citizens using a secret trove of cellphone data developed for counterterrorism. By tracing people’s movements, the government can punish those who defy isolation orders with up to six months in prison.
And by ordering the closing of the nation’s courts, Mr. Netanyahu delayed his scheduled appearance to face corruption charges.
In some parts of the world, new emergency laws have revived old fears of martial law. The Philippine Congress passed legislation last week that gave President Rodrigo Duterte emergency powers and $5.4 billion to deal with the pandemic. Lawmakers watered down an earlier draft law that would have allowed the president to take over private businesses.
“This limitless grant of emergency powers is tantamount to autocracy,” a Philippine rights group, the Concerned Lawyers for Civil Liberties, said in a statement. The lawyers noted that Mr. Duterte had once compared the country’s Constitution to a “scrap of toilet paper.”
Some states are using the pandemic to crack down on dissent. In Jordan, after an emergency “defense law” gave wide latitude to his office, Prime Minister Omar Razzaz said his government would “deal firmly” with anyone who spreads “rumors, fabrications and false news that sows panic.”
Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha of Thailand has assumed the authority to impose curfews and censor the news media. Journalists there have been sued and intimidated for criticizing the government’s response to the outbreak.
While the virus itself may have cooled protesters’ will to crowd public squares, Chile’s declaration of a “state of catastrophe” and the military’s presence on city streets has muted raging dissent that rocked the nation for months.
The pandemic has also disrupted planned elections. This month, Bolivia suspended a much anticipated presidential election that had been scheduled for early May. A disputed election last year set off violent protests and forced President Evo Morales to resign.
The interim president, who promised to serve only as a caretaker, has since consolidated power and announced her plan to run for an elected term. The country’s election tribunal said on Thursday that it would hold the elections sometime between June and September.
In the United States, the Justice Department asked Congress for sweeping new powers, including a plan to eliminate legal protections for asylum seekers and detain people indefinitely without trial. After Republicans and Democrats balked, the department scaled back and submitted a more modest proposal.
Rights groups say governments may continue to absorb more power while their citizens are distracted. They worry that people may not recognize the rights they have ceded until it is too late to reclaim them.
Some emergency bills were waved through so quickly that lawmakers and rights groups had no time to read them, let alone debate their necessity. Rights advocates have also questioned the speed with which states have drafted lengthy legislation.
Certain governments have a set of desired powers “ready to go” in case of emergency or crisis, said Ms. Aolain, the United Nations special rapporteur. They draft laws in advance and wait “for the opportunity of the crisis to be presented,” she said.
It is far from clear what will become of the emergency laws when the crisis passes. In the past, laws enacted in a rush, like the Patriot Act that followed the Sept. 11 attacks, have outlived the crises they were meant to address.
Over time, emergency decrees permeate legal structures and become normalized, said Douglas Rutzen, the president of the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law in Washington, which is tracking new legislation and decrees during the pandemic.
“It’s really easy to construct emergency powers,” Mr. Rutzen said. “It’s really difficult to deconstruct them.”
The pandemic may be a boon to governments with an autocratic bent.
“A Real Dictatorship”
In Hungary, a new law has granted Prime Minister Viktor Orban the power to sidestep Parliament and suspend existing laws. Mr. Orban, who declared a state of emergency this month, now has the sole power to end the emergency. Parliament, where two-thirds of the seats are controlled by his party, approved the legislation on Monday.
Critics say the new legislation could allow Mr. Orban’s government to further erode democratic institutions and persecute journalists and members of the opposition. The law will permanently amend two articles of the criminal code that will further limit freedom of expression and penalize people for breaching quarantine orders. It will also suspend all elections and referendums.
Under one measure, anyone who disseminates information that could hinder the government’s response to the epidemic could face up to five years in prison. The legislation gives broad latitude to the public prosecutor to determine what counts as distorted or false information.
“The draft law is alarming,” said Daniel Karsai, a lawyer in Budapest who said the new legislation had created “a big fear” among Hungarians that “the Orban administration will be a real dictatorship.”
“There is not enough trust in the government in this respect,” he said.
Others pointed to the government’s track record of prolonging emergency legislation long after a crisis. One such decree, issued at the height of Europe’s migration crisis five years ago, is still in effect.
“Eye-Watering Powers”
Robust democracies are also using the pandemic to expand their power.
Britain has a long history of democracy and well-established democratic customs. Nevertheless, a coronavirus bill that was rushed through Parliament at a breakneck pace affords government ministries the power to detain and isolate people indefinitely, ban public gatherings including protests, and shut down ports and airports, all with little oversight.
Introducing the bill in Parliament, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, called it “a departure from the way that we do things in peacetime.” He said the measures would be “strictly temporary and proportionate to the threat that we face.”
But some of the provisions — called Henry VIII powers, after the notorious 16th-century monarch — will give the government unchecked control. The legislation gives sweeping powers to border agents and the police, which could lead to indefinite detention and reinforce “hostile environment” policies against immigrants, critics said.
“Each clause could have had months of debate, and instead it’s all being debated in a few days,” said Adam Wagner, a lawyer who advises a parliamentary committee on human rights.
“Everybody’s been trying just to read it, let alone properly critique it,” he said of the legislation, which runs to 340 pages.
“These are eye-watering powers that would have not been really imaginable in peacetime in this country before,” said Silkie Carlo, the director of Big Brother Watch, a rights group. She called the measures “draconian.”
Ms. Carlo fears that Britain will “swing from crisis to crisis, health panic to health panic, and then find that we’ve lost.”
“We risk easily finding ourselves in a perpetual state of emergency,” she said.
6. Narendra Modi of India has used the Covid-19 outbreak to further his Hindutva fascist agenda: Media voices that were critical of Modi’s handling of the Kashmir crisis and recent police beatings and harassment of Muslims in Mumbai and New Delhi have been harrassed and/or driven into silence under cover of the coronavirus outbreak.
“Media Dissent Fades as Modi Tightens Grip” by Vindu Goel and Jeffrey Gettleman; The New York Times; 4/3/2020.
Spanish Coronavirus Surveillance Drone
7a. Privacy is being dramatically curtailed under cover of combatting the virus: ” . . . . As Thomas Gaulkin of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists noted earlier this month, many Americans— often fierce in their objections to perceived government overreach into their lives—might normally object to dystopian images of flying robots policing lockdowns. But these, of course, are not normal times. ‘If drones do begin to hover over U.S. streets to help control this pandemic,’ Gaulkin wrote, ‘it will be yet another visible reminder that we’ve entered a public health Twilight Zone where Americans have no better option than to embrace what was once only imaginable, and never real.’ . . . ”
Earlier this week, the Elizabeth, New Jersey police department gave residents a look at one of the drones officials there will use to help monitor residents and enforce social distancing measures aimed at slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus. “These drones will be around the City with an automated message from the Mayor telling you to STOP gathering, disperse and go home,” the department said.
The city, which has seen close to 1,500 confirmed COVID cases, is one of a growing number of communities in the United States that is either deploying or considering the use of unmanned drones to support their shelter-in-place directives—a practice that has been used, seemingly with success, in countries like France and China. But on Wednesday, the Elizabeth police department was forced to clarify in a second video emphasizing that the drones were only there to spread “an automated notice about keeping your social distance.”
“We are just trying to save lives, not trying to be big brother,” the department said on Facebook. “There is no recording and no pictures being taken, it is a tool of encouragement to follow the rules.”
The episode underscores the looming tensions for federal and local governments between civil liberties and efforts to combat a deadly pandemic that has paralyzed the country. The U.S. government was caught flat-footed by the public health crisis, thanks to Donald Trump ignoring months of warnings and relying on wishful thinking rather than action. But with America now the epicenter of the pandemic, the administration is trying to play catch-up, with Jared Kushner—the president’s unqualified son-in-law and senior adviser—leading a coronavirus response team that has floated a number of potential measures, including a national surveillance system to monitor outbreaks. That has raised privacy concerns, with critics likening it to the Patriot Act put into place following 9/11. “This is a genuine crisis—we have to work through it and do our best to protect people’s health,” Jessica Rich, a former director of the Federal Trade Commission’s consumer protection bureau, told Politico. “But doing that doesn’t mean we have to destroy privacy.”
Within the federal government itself, there has been a clumsy acknowledgement that there are limits to what the U.S. can do in its efforts to contain the virus. “We are not an authoritarian nation,” Surgeon General Jerome Adams said on Fox News last month, soon after the World Health Organization declared coronavirus a pandemic. “So we have to be careful when we say, ‘Let’s do what China did, let’s do what South Korea did.’” (South Korea is a democracy.) Still, actions by the Trump administration to loosen data sharing rules around healthcare and the national coronavirus surveillance proposal from Kushner’s team have raised concerns from privacy advocates—particularly given the longstanding fears about how the Trump administration has used surveillance and technology in its immigration enforcement and other controversial policies, along with the president’s erosion of democratic norms.
“We dealt with similar issues in 9/11,” Rich said. “One reason that the government doesn’t have all of this data is there’s a lot of concern about big brother maintaining large databases on every consumer on sensitive issues like health, and for good reason.” Indeed, for critics, the privacy questions extend beyond the present moment when governments are grappling with the deadly pandemic — what happens when this crisis passes? Is it possible to get the toothpaste back in the tube? “My biggest concern is that tech will emerge more powerful than it was,” Burcu Kilic, who leads a digital right program at consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen, told Politico. “When things get back to normal, do you think they’ll want to regulate them?”
Municipalities like Elizabeth and Daytona Beach, Florida that are making use of drones to enforce social distancing are getting a taste of what normal might look like, thanks to the pandemic. As Thomas Gaulkin of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists noted earlier this month, many Americans— often fierce in their objections to perceived government overreach into their lives—might normally object to dystopian images of flying robots policing lockdowns. But these, of course, are not normal times. “If drones do begin to hover over U.S. streets to help control this pandemic,” Gaulkin wrote, “it will be yet another visible reminder that we’ve entered a public health Twilight Zone where Americans have no better option than to embrace what was once only imaginable, and never real.”
7b. The alpha predator of the electronic surveillance landscape is Peter Thiel’s Palantir. They have landed two key government contracts in connection with the Covid-19 outbreak: ” . . . . Palantir, the $20 billion-valued Palo Alto tech company backed by Facebook-funder Peter Thiel, has been handed a $17.3 million contract with one of the leading health bodies leading the charge against COVID-19. It’s the biggest contract handed to a Silicon Valley company to assist America’s COVID-19 response, according to Forbes’ review of public contracts, and comes as other Californian giants like Apple and Google try to figure out how best to help governments fight the deadly virus. . . . The money, from the federal government’s COVID-19 relief fund, is for Palantir Gotham licenses, according to a contract record reviewed by Forbes. That technology is designed to draw in data from myriad sources and, regardless of what form or size, turn the information into a coherent whole. The ‘platform’ is customized for each client, so it meets with their mission needs, according to Palantir. . . . Palantir Gotham is slightly different to Foundry, a newer product that’s aimed more at general users rather than data science whizzes, with more automation than Gotham. As Forbes previously reported, Foundry is being used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to ingest information from all manner of hospitals across America to see where best to provide more or less resource. . . . Palantir is now working with at least 12 governments on their responses to coronavirus, according to two sources with knowledge of its COVID-19 work. That includes the U.K.’s National Health Service, which is using Foundry for similar purposes as the CDC. . . .”
Palantir, the $20 billion-valued Palo Alto tech company backed by Facebook-funder Peter Thiel, has been handed a $17.3 million contract with one of the leading health bodies leading the charge against COVID-19.
It’s the biggest contract handed to a Silicon Valley company to assist America’s COVID-19 response, according to Forbes’ review of public contracts, and comes as other Californian giants like Apple and Google try to figure out how best to help governments fight the deadly virus.
The deal was signed on April 10 with a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) subsidiary agency, the Program Support Center (PSC), which provides “shared services across the federal government.”
The money, from the federal government’s COVID-19 relief fund, is for Palantir Gotham licenses, according to a contract record reviewed by Forbes. That technology is designed to draw in data from myriad sources and, regardless of what form or size, turn the information into a coherent whole. The “platform” is customized for each client, so it meets with their mission needs, according to Palantir.
…
Palantir Gotham is slightly different to Foundry, a newer product that’s aimed more at general users rather than data science whizzes, with more automation than Gotham. As Forbes previously reported, Foundry is being used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to ingest information from all manner of hospitals across America to see where best to provide more or less resource. That includes supplies of COVID-19 personal protection equipment like masks and respirators.
Forbes also revealed earlier this week that the U.S. Coast Guard, a department within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), had contracted Palantir for $8 million for its own COVID-19 response efforts. The tech company declined to talk about the nature of the work, whilst the Coast Guard hadn’t commented at the time of publication.
Palantir is now working with at least 12 governments on their responses to coronavirus, according to two sources with knowledge of its COVID-19 work. That includes the U.K.’s National Health Service, which is using Foundry for similar purposes as the CDC.
Despite the ostensibly controversy-free deal with the British health body, the reception was somewhat frosty. That was, in part, because of Palantir’s links to the U.S. military intelligence complex; it was funded by the CIA’s venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, and was said to have helped find Osama bin Laden. The uneasiness from privacy bodies was also related to Palantir’s work with Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), which has drawn some criticism from human rights groups.
Calling California For Coronavirus Contracts
Outside of California, a handful of tech companies are signing off COVID-19 relief contracts. The federal government sales arm of Dell, the Texan hardware and software business, signed off on a $35 million deal to provide Veterans Affairs with Microsoft security technology and services.
Other Silicon Valley giants like Apple, Google and Oracle have been offering solutions to help ease the crisis. Oracle, as Forbes exclusively reported, is working on a giant database to track the impact of COVID-19 treatments on patients. On Friday, Apple and Google announced they were collaborating on a project for a pro-privacy contact tracing app to help people know if they’ve been in the same area as someone who’d contracted the virus.
But in terms of Silicon Valley companies, whom many were hoping would rapidly develop coronavirus-fighting tech, it’s Palantir that’s leading, in money terms at least.
7c. About the above-mentioned Foundry:
In the last week, staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) started logging into a new web app. It promises to help them watch where COVID-19 is spreading and checks how well equipped hospitals are to deal with the spike in cases of the fatal virus, according to two sources familiar with the work. According to those sources, it was built by Palantir, a $20 billion-valued big data company whose data harvesting work for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has provoked criticism from human rights groups.
With the CDC project, it’s avoiding any such controversy, partly because it isn’t ingesting personally-identifiable information, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivities of the government contract. Instead, the sources said the tech, based on its big data gathering and analysis technology called Palantir Foundry, takes in a range of anonymized data from U.S. hospitals and healthcare agencies, including lab test results, emergency department statuses, bed capacity and ventilator supply. Palantir is also developing models for the outbreak of the virus to help CDC predict where resources are required, they added.
“In the U.S. we are continuing to work closely with our partners at HHS, including CDC, and across the government agencies to ensure they have the most comprehensive, accurate and timely view of information as the COVID-19 response effort evolves,” a Palantir spokesperson said.
The CDC hadn’t responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Such tech would give the CDC a clear understanding of what’s happening in any given U.S. geography, whether at state, county or city level, at a single moment in time. The information would help the CDC decide where to allocate resources, such as masks and ventilators, one source said. That could prove vital given the rush to meet a pervasive and urgent need for ventilators, in particular.
Palantir is one of several tech companies, including Google and Oracle, flexing their prowess in data gathering and analysis in efforts to stem the coronavirus. Some ideas, such as using locations from mobile phones to track movements of people, have prompted concerns that once the crisis ebbs, increased surveillance will be hard to unwind. Palantir’s tool does not use any personally-identifiable data at this point, but could do in the future, said one of the sources.
Similar to Palantir’s U.K. work
The app, which CDC staff started to use in the last few days, is hosted by Amazon Web Services as part of a partnership for the CDC project, one of the sources said. Palantir has long used the cloud giant for back-end infrastructure.
The U.S. data gathering app looks a lot like a project revealed in the U.K. last week, where reports indicated Palantir was also providing its Foundry platform, alongside Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, to assist the National Health Service (NHS) in the coronavirus crisis.
Palantir’s Foundry will help the NHS determine current occupancy levels at hospitals, down to the number and type of beds, as well as the capacity of accident and emergency, departments and waiting times, wrote the U.K. government late last week. The tool is also gathering details of the lengths of stay for coronavirus patients, the U.K. project coordinators said.
“Palantir is a data processor, not a data controller, and cannot pass on or use the data for any wider purpose without the permission of NHS England,” it added.
The response to Palantir’s involvement in the U.K. has been cautious in light of its previous surveillance work, notably its production of tools that helped ICE target undocumented immigrants in America. It has close ties to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, including the CIA, an investor via the agency’s In-Q-Tel venture fund, and was credited with helping find Osama Bin Laden before his killing. The company was founded by a social theory Ph.D. Alex Karp, a long-time associate of Palantir investor Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist who was also an early backer of Facebook.
It’s unclear just how much Palantir will make from the work. According to public records, the most recent contract signed by Palantir with the CDC was in early February for $675,000 for unspecified hardware and software license renewals. Palantir also signed a contract for just $28,000 with the Food and Drug Administration late last month for use of the Palantir Gotham tool, which is typically used to help government agencies find criminals or criminal groups within masses of data. . . .
8. Exemplifying the multi-dimensional chess scenario in connection with the “bio-psy-op” is the GOP’s plan to use the Covid-19 outbreak to scapegoat China and tar the Democrats and Joe Biden with the same brush.
Of particular note in this regard is the Steve Bannon‑J. Kyle Bass-Tommy Hicks, Jr. triumvirate discussed in–among other programs–FTR #‘s 1111 and 1112.
At the epicenter of the anti-China effort, Bannon is networked with Bass, who is asymmetrically invested with regard to the Hong Kong and Chinese economies. Hicks, in turn, is a co-investor with Bass, co-chairman of the RNC, and one of the prime movers of the interagency governmental networks involved in the anti-China destabilization operation.
This networked relationship affords investors like Bass and Hicks the ultimate position from which to profit from “insider” information.
The synthesis of covert operations and electoral politics reminds us of the 1952 election, in which Arthur Bliss Lane occupied a key position in the Crusade For Freedom, as well as the GOP. (We discussed this in AFA #37, and utilized information from, among other sources, Blowback by Christopher Simpson.
The strategy could not be clearer: From the Republican lawmakers blanketing Fox News to new ads from President Trump’s super PAC to the biting criticism on Donald Trump Jr.’s Twitter feed, the G.O.P. is attempting to divert attention from the administration’s heavily criticized response to the coronavirus by pinning the blame on China.
With the death toll from the pandemic already surpassing 34,000 Americans and unemployment soaring to levels not seen since the Great Depression, Republicans increasingly believe that elevating China as an archenemy culpable for the spread of the virus, and harnessing America’s growing animosity toward Beijing, may be the best way to salvage a difficult election.
Republican senators locked in difficult races are preparing commercials condemning China. Conservatives with future presidential ambitions of their own, like Senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley, are competing to see who can talk tougher toward the country where the virus first emerged. Party officials are publicly and privately brandishing polling data in hopes Mr. Trump will confront Beijing.
Mr. Trump’s own campaign aides have endorsed the strategy, releasing an attack ad last week depicting Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee, as soft on China. The ad relied heavily on images of people of Asian descent, including former Gov. Gary Locke of Washington, who is Chinese-American, and it was widely viewed as fanning the flames of xenophobia. . . .
. . . . The strategy includes efforts to leverage the U.S.-China relationship against Mr. Biden, who Republicans believe is vulnerable because of his comments last year playing down the geopolitical challenge posed by China and what Republicans claim was high-paying work that his son, Hunter, has done there. (A lawyer for the younger Mr. Biden said he was uncompensated for his work.)
Mr. Biden, for his part, has criticized Mr. Trump’s warm words for China. On Friday, his campaign released a video assailing the president for not pressing Mr. Xi to let the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention into his country and for being “more worried about protecting his trade deal with China than he was about the virus.”
On a conference call with reporters, Antony J. Blinken, a senior Biden adviser, noted that in January and February “the president praised China and President Xi more than 15 times.” He attributed the flattery to the administration’s not wanting to “risk that China pull back on implementing” the initial trade agreement the two countries signed in January. . . .. . . . The president’s hopes for securing a major trade agreement with China have been reinforced by a coterie of his advisers, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin,who have often prevailed in internal battles over White House hard-liners.
But with the coronavirus death toll growing and the economy at a standstill, polls show that Americans have never viewed China more negatively.
In a recent 17-state survey conducted by Mr. Trump’s campaign, 77 percent of voters agreed that China covered up the extent of the coronavirus outbreak, and 79 percent of voters indicated they did not think China had been truthful about the extent of infections and deaths, according to a Republican briefed on the poll. . . .
. . . . “At this moment in time a trade deal is not the right topic of discussion,” said Senator Steve Daines, Republican of Montana, who said the pandemic had highlighted the country’s reliance on China in the same painful fashion that the oil crisis of the 1970s revealed how it was at the mercy of the Middle East. “This has exposed our dependency on China for P.P.E. and for critical drugs.”
Mr. Hawley, a first-term Missouri senator has also denounced China, calling for a United States-led international commission to determine the origin of the virus and demanding that American victims be allowed to sue the Chinese government.
“This is the 9/11 of this generation,” said Mr. Hawley, adding that he hopes Mr. Trump “keeps the pressure high.”He said Republicans should make the issue central this fall and demonstrate “how are we going to come out of this stronger by actually standing up to the Chinese.”
Few Republicans have been more outspoken than Mr. Cotton, an Arkansan who was warning about the virus at the start of the year when few lawmakers were paying attention, and has been urging Senate candidates to make China a centerpiece of their campaigns.
“China unleashed this pandemic on the world and they should pay the price,” Mr. Cotton said. “Congress and the president should work together to hold China accountable.” . . .
9. Exemplary, as well, of the bio-psy-op as synthesis of covert operation and political crusading is the GOP’s cynical manipulation of emergency appropriations to achieve their longstanding objective of crippling state and local governments, as well as driving the Postal Service into bankruptcy. Privatizing postal service has been a right-wing/GOP objective for a long time. ” . . . . Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows what is really happening: McConnell is trying to get more money for businesses while continuing to shortchange state and local governments. After all, “starve the beast” — forcing governments to cut services by depriving them of resources — has been Republican strategy for decades. This is just more of the same. . . . Oh, and Trump personally has ruled out aid for the Postal Service. . . .”
. . . . Right now the economy is in the equivalent of a medically induced coma, with whole sectors shut down to limit social contact and hence slow the spread of the coronavirus. We can’t bring the economy out of this coma until, at minimum, we have sharply reduced the rate of new infections and dramatically increased testing so that we can quickly respond to any new outbreaks. . . .
. . . . Since we’re nowhere close to that point — in particular, testing is still far behind what’s needed — we’re months away from a safe end of the lockdown. This is causing severe hardship for workers, businesses, hospitals and — last but not least — state and local governments, which unlike the federal government must balance their budgets. . . .
. . . . What policy can and should do is mitigate that hardship. And the last relief package did, in fact, do a lot of the right things. But it didn’t do enough of them. . . .
. . . . It’s true that Senate Republicans are trying to push through an extra $250 billion in small-business lending — and Democrats are willing to go along. But the Democrats also insist that the package include substantial aid for hospitals and for state and local governments. And Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, is refusing to include this aid.
McConnell claims that he would be willing to consider additional measures in later legislation. But let’s get real. There is absolutely no reason not to include the money now.
Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows what is really happening: McConnell is trying to get more money for businesses while continuing to shortchange state and local governments. After all, “starve the beast” — forcing governments to cut services by depriving them of resources — has been Republican strategy for decades. This is just more of the same.
This reality leaves Democrats with no choice except to stand firm while they still have leverage. Bear in mind that McConnell could have the money he wants tomorrow if he were willing to meet them halfway. So far, however, he isn’t. Oh, and Trump personally has ruled out aid for the Postal Service.
This AP article reports that the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres urged world leaders to fight hate in his speech. He addresses this during the COVID-19 pandemic in which he reports how strengthens ethno-nationalism, populism, authoritarianism intrude and repress on human rights. He mentions that elderly are being targeted by claiming they are the most vulnerable. Other targets include health professionals, aids workers, journalists and whistleblowers, He talked about how minorities including Muslim and Jews and Muslims were being targeted. The link at the bottom also includes a video portion of his speech.
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: 00:54 EDT, 8 May 2020 | UPDATED: 05:13 EDT, 8 May 2020
Covid-19 has unleashed a ‘tsunami of hate’ with a surge in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and attacks on Muslims, UN chief warns
• Antonio Guterres urged world leaders to ‘immunize society against virus of hate’
• Said minorities such as Jews and Muslims are being scapegoated over Covid-19
• Warned extremists will use lockdown ‘to prey on captive and despairing people’
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday the coronavirus pandemic keeps unleashing ‘a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering’ and appealed for ‘an all-out effort to end hate speech globally.’
Guterres said ‘anti-foreigner sentiment has surged online and in the streets, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have spread, and COVID-19-related anti-Muslim attacks have occurred.’
The UN chief said migrants and refugees ‘have been vilified as a source of the virus — and then denied access to medical treatment.’
Antonio Guterres@antonioaguterres
#COVID19 does not care who we are, where we live, or what we believe.
Yet the pandemic continues to unleash a tsunami of hate and xenophobia, scapegoating and scare-mongering.
That’s why I’m appealing for an all-out effort to end hate speech globally.
‘With older persons among the most vulnerable, contemptible memes have emerged suggesting they are also the most expendable,’ he said. ‘And journalists, whistleblowers, health professionals, aid workers and human rights defenders are being targeted simply for doing their jobs.’
Guterres called on political leaders to show solidarity with all people, on educational institutions to focus on ‘digital literacy’ at a time when ‘extremists are seeking to prey on captive and potentially despairing audiences.’
He called on the media, especially social media, to ‘remove racist, misogynist and other harmful content,’ on civil society to strengthen their outreach to vulnerable people, and on religious figures to serve as ‘models of mutual respect.’
‘And I ask everyone, everywhere, to stand up against hate, treat each other with dignity and take every opportunity to spread kindness,’ Guterres said.
The secretary-general stressed that COVID-19 ‘does not care who we are, where we live, what we believe or about any other distinction.’
His global appeal to address and counter COVID-19-related hate speech follows his April 23 message calling the coronarivus pandemic ‘a human crisis that is fast becoming a human rights crisis.’
Guterres said then that the pandemic has seen ‘disproportionate effects on certain communities, the rise of hate speech, the targeting of vulnerable groups, and the risks of heavy-handed security responses undermining the health response.’
With ‘rising ethno-nationalism, populism, authoritarianism and a push back against human rights in some countries, the crisis can provide a pretext to adopt repressive measures for purposes unrelated to the pandemic,’ he warned.
In February, Guterres issued a call to action to countries, businesses and people to help renew and revive human rights across the globe, laying out a seven-point plan amid concerns about climate change, conflict and repression.
https://mol.im/a/8299683
Oh look at that: President Trump was rage tweeting on Thursday night about the protests in the Twin Cities over the clear murder of an African American man under arrest, George Floyd, ending the rage tweets with a threat to call in the National Guard to start shooting protestors:
And to underscore that threat he ended the tweets with a truly chilling phrase that was quite possibly the worst and most inflammatory thing he could have possibly said under the situation: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”
As the following TPM piece points out, it wasn’t just hyper-inflammatory because it was a presidential threat of deadly military force against civilians. It’s also a slogan that has become synonymous with a celebration of police brutality against the black community. Surprise:
“The phrase itself comes from a December 1967 press conference held by then-Miami police chief Walter Headley, in which he declared a “get tough” policy — a “war” on crime in black neighborhoods in Miami. Or as Headley was quoted in news reports at the time, “young hoodlums, from 15 to 21, who have taken advantage of the civil rights campaign.””
You have to wonder: did Trump consciously choose that slogan or did he just vaguely remember it from decades ago without realizing the context and thought it had a nice ring to it? It’s one of features of Trump’s strategic chaos: we can never really differentiate between the deliberate cunning vs uncontrollable chaos of his actions. But either way, Trump managed to choose to end his National Guard threat with what was possibly the most inflammatory historical reference he could have chosen. A slogan that wasn’t used just once by police chief Walter Headly but multiple times:
It was such appalling leadership even the Oath Keepers had to come out and condemn him. It’s pretty bad when your own militia cult has to rebuke you:
But that rebuke by the Oath Keepers isn’t just notable because the Oath Keepers are the leading group in the US advocating for a ‘sovereign citizen’-style revolution that calls for militias to be deputized to provide law enforcement services, a scenario in keeping with the Rex-84 martial law scenarios drawn up by the Reagan administration. It’s also notable because it comes after weeks of Trump and the militia jointly and enthusiastically supporting the armed anti-COVID lockdown protests on state capitals across the US. It highlights the surreal nature of US politics: the President is supporting armed militia’s intimidation of state officials — a conflict that pits local officials against state officials which is thematically consistent with the ‘sovereign citizen’ refusal to recognize the authority of government officials above the level of county sheriff — at the same time we have the president threatening to send in the National Guard to shoot protestors during anti police brutality protests.
But as the following Raw Story article describes, there’s another significant aspect of this the story of the Twin Cities protests that make the Oath Keeper’s condemnation of Trump’s threats so significant: as we should have expected, the militia movement that’s been increasingly openly threatening civil war over the COVID-19 lockdown policies has been infiltrating the Twin Cities protests. It’s being ostensibly done in ‘solidarity’ with the protestors under the guise of a mutual opposition to police brutality. But as the following article makes clear, that’s basically just the cover story for infiltrating the protests and trying and stoking violence in the hopes of creating a larger civil conflict:
“Just as many states are reopening their economies — and taking the wind out of the conservative protests — the boogaloo movement found a new galvanizing cause: the protests in Minneapolis against the police killing of George Floyd.”
It’s a key point in all of this: the glomming on of these militia groups to the protests in Minneapolis is happening at the same time virtually all of the states are repening their economies undermining the entire premise of their “boogaloo” civil war campaign to wage wars against state governments. A “boogaloo” movement that reflects the growth of the “accelerationist” wing of the far right that views creating as much chaos and destruction as possible as the path to fomenting a civil war intended to be a race war. In other words, this is basically an adaptation of Atomwaffen’s strategy which, in turn, is an adaptation of James Mason and Charles Manson. That’s the underlying motive for the militia groups’ sudden sympathy for the black community. So when we hear about the boogaloo movement creating memes that incorporate civil rights figures it’s basically just trolling. Trolling intended to create the illusion of a common cause in the hops of using the protests as props to accelerate the collapse of society to start a race war:
Keep in mind that, while it’s technically true that the boogaloo movement is not monolithic and draws from a spectrum of groups from militias and anarcho-capitalists to white supremacists, rare is the militia member or anarcho-capitalist that isn’t at least a latent white supremacist. Yes, such rare individuals do exist but all of those groups have a heavy overlap in worldviews. Also keep in mind that the ‘resist tyranny at all costs, and if it creates a civil war, so be it’ version of the boogaloo movement is typically the public justification for the idea of stoking a race war under ostensibly ‘patriotic’ reasons. In other words, ‘resist tyranny at all costs, and if it creates a civil war, so be it’ is really just branding for ‘burn society down and build a white ethno-stage’.
And note how rapidly there was boolgaloo members on the scene of the Minneapolis protests: they were there on the scene on the first night within a few hours, with members in encrypted chat forums openly talking about firing shots and blaming it on the crowd. And others from out-of-state were ready to pack up and drive to Minneapolis. So we can be confident that these protests were infused with these far right activists from the very first evening of protests:
Also recall then when antifascist activist Daryle Lamont Jenkins warns us of the 2015 incident when a far right group fired shots at a Black Lives Matter (BLM) protest in Minneapolis, that wasn’t just an incident involving a far right group approaching the BLM protestors and firing shots. They had previously showed up at the protests pretending to be supporters. And around that same time, an Oath Keeper member was found trying to hand out AR-15 rifles to BLM protestors at a parallel protest in Ferguson, Missouri. So this far right tactic of infiltrating police brutality protests in the hopes of stoking more violence has been going on for a while:
So we’ll see how much success the boolagoo movement has at forming alliances with groups they want to eventually go to war with. Maybe their joint open loathing of the police will be enough. But, of course, we can’t ignore the fact that these far right groups aren’t opposed to use of force by government authorities, especially when it’s used against perceived enemies. They’re only against the use of force against fellow far right groups. That’s why they’re so keen on vigilante justice and they asking to be deputized and given power by the state to enforce their own form of justice. When Ammon Bundy waged his armed standoff in Oregon they kept talking about forming citizen grand juries with the power to hang public officials for treason because that’s the ultimate plan: bring about a civil war/race war and then execute all of their political enemies. Pretty authoritarian stuff.
And as the following BuzzFeed article describes, it was that exact far right dream meme — of having militias go and round up and execute all of their political enemies — that President Trump just amplied Thursday morning when he retweeted a post by a local New Mexico GOP official. This official, Couy Griffin, an Otero County, New Mexico, commissioner, also happens to be a member of “Cowboys for Trump.” So what did this official say that Trump decided to retweet? Well, during an anti-COVID-lockdown protest rally, Couy decided to declare that “I’ve come to a place where I’ve come to the conclusion that the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat,” to cheers and applause. And as we’re going to see, Griffin is unambiguously of ‘sovereign citizen’ variety with a history of encourage local law enforcement to go to war with state police. That’s who Trump decided to retweet on Thursday morning, hours before his “when the looting starts the shooting starts” tweet:
““I’ve come to a place where I’ve come to the conclusion that the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat,” Griffin says in the recorded speech, to cheers and applause.”
Those were the words Griffin speaks early on in the video Trump decided to retweet Thursday morning. And while Griffin goes on to clarify that he wasn’t talking about dead “in the physical sense”, we have to keep in mind how this entire movement to stoke a civil conflict is rooted in code words and trolling. That’s how it’s done in plain sight. Just say you were joking or didn’t really mean you want to kill people to distract the public from all of the previous comments that are very explicit about killing people while the target audience goes on to hear those explicit messages. That’s the tactic at work here and it was just massively amplified by the president yesterday:
And now here’s that KRWG article with more Couy Griffen quotes, all from the past couple of months. Quotes calling for local police to go to war with state policy if COVID-lockdown orders are enforced. And quotes asking for the local police to deputize Griffin and his fellow militia members to help wage that war:
” Griffin Called On NM County Sheriffs To “Hold The Line” Against Red Flag Laws And Volunteered Himself And Others For Any “Posses” That Were Necessary For Upcoming “Battles.” “Draw the hard line, hold it, God bless you. And if you need any patriots all you gotta to do is call and we’ll come running. We’ll sign up for whatever posses you want us to sign up for. We’ll stand in any battles that you want to lead us into...We will stand with you. We will stand shoulder to shoulder with you through any battle that you choose to lead us into.” 5/8/20″
Volunteering himself and others to form a posses to help fight upcoming “battles”. Battles apparently with New Mexico state police trying to enforce COVID lockdown orders. That’s what Couy Griffen has been calling for, which is classic sovereign citizen ideology:
As we can see, on the same day Trump threatened to send in the National Guard to shoot protestors, he was retweeting and amplifying a sovereign citizen call for war between state and local authorities and a broader call for civil war. And this is all happening as the Trump-aligned ‘boogaloo’ movement infiltrates these protests over police violence with the intention of stoking violence and, sure enough, those protests explode. And that gives us a general idea of Trumps 2020 reelection strategy: Helter Skelter. Because the accelerationist neo-Nazis clearly aren’t the only ones taking a page from Charles Manson in 2020.
Well this is odd, although not really unexpected story that potentially relates to the reports of far right ‘boogaloo’ figures infiltrating the protests over the death of George Floyd: There are videos and reports of a Minneapolis protestor dress in all black wearing a pink gas mask and holding an umbrella who was conspicuously walking around with a hammer and smashing the windows of Autozone store. It doesn’t appear to have been raining at the time. This was several hours before that Autozone building went up in flames later Wednesday evening, which was the first building to burn down during the protests of George Floyd’s killing by a Minneapolis police officer.
The identity of the man is unclear although there’s already suspicions that he’s a Minneapolis police officer. While there are claims that the officer’s ex-wife has come out to say she believes the man in the videos is her ex-husband the police department has formally denied its one of their officers. Part of what added to the suspicion that the man was a police officer is that idea that holding an umbrella is a tactic to allow police helicopters to identify undercover officers in the crowd. But as the following article notes, umbrellas were also found to be useful in the face of tear gas and used widely by protestors in Hong Kong.
Adding to the mystery is people pointing out the odd “umbrella man” chapter of the JFK assassination, where a man unfurled an umbrella right at the moment and spot where JFK was shot in Dallas and later claimed it was part of a symbolic protest of the Kennedy family’s support of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler. So there’s quite a range of possible reasons someone might have an umbrella at protest apparently, from tactical purposes to JFK assassination symbolism.
But as the following Insider article points out, there’s another part of this that has almost like a play-acting theatrical dimension: In the videos where the man is casually smashing the Autozone windows, a man in a pink shirt comes up to seemingly confront the man before a second protestor also comes up to confront him. At point point they appear to be exchanging taunts with each other, with the man in the pink shirt following the umbrella man after a crowd of protestors starts following him. The umbrella man tells the man in the pink shirt something like, “If you keep following me I’ll fight you right now”, and the guy in the pink shirt says, “you wanna go? What’s up?”. But that man in the pink shirt is also previously filmed walking right alongside the umbrella man earlier on in the protests so it seems like they’re together the whole time. That’s what gives their later confrontation almost a theatrical feel. At the same time, the man in the pink shirt isn’t wasn’t hiding his face at all and spoke on video to protestors about the need for sustained reform efforts that go beyond immediate protests. So while it’s unclear if we’ll ever learn the identity of the umbrella man, we’ll probably learn the identity of the guy in the pink shirt at some point. That should be interesting:
“The man took the hammer to several windows of an AutoZone store in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Wednesday, video footage shows. That was before the store was set on fire, and before flames engulfed much of the city during demonstrations protesting the police killing of George Floyd”
It’s pretty unambiguous from the videos: no one at the protest appeared to recognize the umbrella man and suspicious about him were immediate. Except for one protestor who did seem to have some sort of connection to him: the man in the pink shirt who was filmed earlier in the day walking and talking with him. And it’s the man in the pink shirt who is the first to confront the umbrella man after protestors turn on him for breaking the Autozone windows. It’s all quite odd:
And now here’s a Forbes piece that mentions the ‘Umbrella Man’ symbolism in relation to the JFK assassination:
“This isn’t the first time the mysterious identity of an Umbrella Man has whipped up speculation. In the wake of President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination in Dallas, a man seen holding an umbrella as he stood near Dealey Plaza became the subject of conspiracy theories. Some speculated he acted as a lookout and that his umbrella was a signal to start shooting, or that it contained some kind of weapon. But in 1978, the Umbrella Man came forward as Dallas resident Louie Steven Witt, who testified he brought the umbrella to protest what he said was Nazi appeasement on the part of the Kennedy family prior to World War II. Kennedy’s father and family patriarch Joseph P Kennedy aligned himself with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who was known for carrying an umbrella. Umbrellas were used as a symbol of criticism against Chamberlain in the 1930’s for his appeasement policy toward Adolf Hitler.”
As we can see, umbrellas are highly useful props if sending highly confusing and contradictory symbolic messaging is one of your protest goals. Maybe you have that umbrella to ward off the tear gas. Maybe it’s to notify the policy not to attack you. Or perhaps there’s some sort of confusing JFK-assassination-related symbolism at work. It’s worth keeping in mind that deploying symbolism with highly contradictory interpretations is a core aspect of the classic trolling tactics that are now ubiquitous on the far right and at the core of Trumpian politics and the mainstreaming of far right memes and ideas.
At the same time, when we hear Attorney General Keith Ellison say:
We have to acknowledge that the umbrella man really does look a lot a very typical protestor we’ve seen over and over at civil rights protests for decades now: He’s dressed exactly like Black Bloc anarchists who routinely show up at virtually any left-leaning protest precisely in order to break stuff, start fires, and spark violence. And Black Bloc is, of course, one of those movements that’s absolutely perfect for infiltrators of all stripes. It’s a reminder of how wildly unhelpful the Black Bloc anarchists are: if you want to dress up like a bad actor to just dress up like a Black Bloc anarchist because if there’s a protest in the United States you can be sure Black Bloc will show up eventually with their signature black outfits and masks. And that’s not even counting the very real far right influences in the black community via groups like the Muslim Brotherhood or the Nation of Islam, although in the case of the white ‘umbrella man’ he seems like an unlikely affiliate with those groups. The point is that dealing with bad actors peddling awful counterproductive advice has been one of the primary challenges of the left in the US for a long time now and that leaves us with quite a long suspect list for the origins of ‘umbrella man’.
And that raises the question regarding the assertion by Minnesota governor Tim Walz that 80 percent of the people arrested for property damage came from out of state: so how many of them were Black Bloc? How about far right ‘boogaloo’ movement members? Are authorities going to be able to determine the affiliations of the arrestees and will that information eventually be released? We’ll see, but with the National Guard now being called in to there could be a lot more arrests coming up so it’s going to be interesting to see if we eventually get to learn about the ideological makeup of those arrested for arson and other significant crimes of that nature:
“The struggle to control the mayhem could bring another 1,000 National Guard soldiers into the cities, supplementing a force of 700, already the largest civil policing authority in the state’s history. Law enforcement officials said it would be the first full mobilization of the Guard in Minnesota since World War II.”
The first full mobilization of the Guard in Minnesota since World War II. That’s what is now underway. And according to Governor Walz, as many as 80% of the people causing destruction and fire in the cities could be from elsewhere:
“It was not clear if the outside groups suspected to be playing a part in the mayhem are made up of white supremacist agitators, left wing anarchists, or both.”
Don’t forget: a big part of what makes the left wing anarchists so troublesome is half of them are probably undercover agents or far right infiltrators. That’s just the nature of these groups. Plus, being genuine anarchists just makes them unhelpful in general whether they’re left wing or right wing anarchists. It’s one of those schools of politics that’s just not grounded in reality whether it’s well-intentioned or not.
And that points towards one of the major challenges this round of protest movements are clearly going to have going forward: staying grounded in the reality of the original purpose of the protests. What started off as a highly sympathetic protest over a man being unambiguously and casually murdered on the streets by police is in the process of being successfully redefined as a crisis over chaotic destruction and arson. A repeating cycle of protest rooted in rage and desperation, incidents of violence and destruction followed by a police response(often over-response), more rage and desperation, and now the National Guard is being called him. And there are so many possible bad actors influencing or trying to speak for these protests we have no idea who is actually doing what. It’s a big reminder that the bad actors operating in bad faith — whether they are fake protestors, misguided anarchists, ‘boolagloo’ neo-Nazis, or the kind of bad cops who murder citizens in cold blood — are one group we all should be protesting against.
@Pterrafractyl–
Again, great work!
In my fifth decade on the air, one gets a bit of a sixth sense about such things.
In addition to the growing conviction that we are seeing a manifestation of “Assholes for Trump,” I have a little bird whispering in my ear that some of these out-of-state elements may have done some training with Azov or some similar elements.
In any event, this will certainly benefit Trump and the far right.
I close with the reminder that, before the trouble began, Al Sharpton (FBI and CIA links) and Jive Jesse (Jackson), whose pivotal role in murdering Martin Luther King is highlighted in both FTR #46 and FTR #1005, decamped for Minneapolis.
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-46-orders-to-kill/
https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-1005-what-the-hell-does-dave-emory-mean-by-the-so-called-progressive-sector/
Best,
Dave
@Everybody–
The footage of the Floyd arrest/death speaks for itself.
What may be more difficult for people to grasp is why I have termed the Covid-19 “op” a “bio-psy-op apocalypse.”
What you are seeing is why.
Get people terrified for their economic future (justifiably), terrified of something they can’t see but that can kill them (a virus), socially isolate them from necessary human contact (including sexual interaction), then infuriate them and–watch the fireworks!
Sadly, people don’t seem to be able to learn from the past. It doesn’t surprise me that there are reported white supremacists, along with agents provacateurs and the usual cast of Black Bloc morons, along with infuriated black folks.
One can only wonder if the rioters can grasp that this is going to benefit Trump?
It is a sure bet that the Boogaloo neo-Nazis et al do.
THAT is why they are doing what they are doing.
Best,
Dave
@Dave-
Yes the zombie apocalypse staggers on with those who simply do not die. Jackson, who moved MLK to the upstairs balcony room at the Lorraine
Motel to be assassinated, and FBI informant Sharpton whose doomed 2004 presidential campaign was funded by Nixon acolyte (and Trump advisor)
Roger Stone still walk the earth.
But other old hands have suddenly been maneuvered into place as well.
Keith Ellison, AG of Minnesota, has just been appointed by the governor to lead the prosecution in George Floyd’s murder. Ellison used to belong to
the Nation of Islam and was an organizer for the vile racist and anti-semite Louis Farrakhan’s 1995 Million Man March. Farrakhan has long been viewed
as a person of interest in the assassination of Malcolm X yet Ellison once described Farrakhan as a role model for black youth.
And Warren Commission defender Michael Baden performed a second autopsy at the request of the Floyd family attorney concluding that Floyd died
of homicide by asphyxia. This conclusion contradicts the Minneapolis medical examiner’s report which found no traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.
Defence counsel for any police officers charged will naturally exploit these two contradictory reports at trial. Are Ellison and Baden capable of bringing
justice for Floyd or will they fumble this police murder badly leading to more despair and disgust with America’s broken legal system?
Time will tell but I’m not hopeful and if they blow it that will just mean more violence and more oppression.
The Kennedys, KIng, Malcolm are long gone but zombies like Jackson, Sharpton, Farrakhan, Stone, Ellison and Baden stagger on.
I omitted another important detail in Minnesota AG Keith Ellison’s resume. He’s been a Bernie Sanders supporter. Sanders endorsed Ellison to become
DNC chair over the eventual winner Tom Perez. And from his position as AG Ellison in turn supported Sanders’ bid for the presidency. So he appears
to have moved from a Muslim African-American social political focus, when he used the name Keith Ellison-Muhammed, over to the so-called
progressive wing of the Democratic Party and now back to state politics as the top lawman in Minnesota. He gets around and seems to easily shift
identity and purpose, almost as though he has some unseen sponsors managing his career.
@Dennis–
Don’t forget Ellison’s links to the Muslim Brotherhood: https://www.globalmbwatch.com/2016/11/13/analysis-the-madness-of-the-democratic-party-keith-ellison-as-dnc/
Note, also, that Identity Europa has maintained a Twitter account giving the impression that they are “Antifa.”
https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=Awr9GjGa4tVeny8AnU9XNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTByb2lvbXVuBGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg–/RV=2/RE=1591104282/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fwww.dailymail.co.uk%2fnews%2farticle-8378767%2fTwitter-shuts-Antifa-account-run-white-supremacist-group-urging-violence.html/RK=2/RS=JLJsq0TxrumQnjx9IQnsgUWzMZ8-
Ain’t we got fun!
Best,
Dave
Here’s a few articles that highlight one of the aspects of the global financial market turmoil that could end up being a bigger and bigger deal as the pandemic continues to create unprecedented market extremes like the negative spot price of oil hit back in April: the massive sovereign wealth funds of the world using these market plunges to go on equity buying sprees.
First, here’s a Bloomberg article from the end of May talking about an unusual move by the Saudi central bank during March and April: an overall injection of $40 billion from the central bank into the country’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) sovereign wealth fund so it could capitalize on the historic market drops to buy stock in companies like BP, Boeing, Citigroup and Facebook:
“In his statement on Friday, Al-Jadaan said the fund was capitalizing on “a range of investment opportunities that presented themselves in light of the current circumstances global financial markets are passing through.””
Yes, even historic economic crises are an opportunity...as long as you have a giant pile of cash. And the Saudi PIF clearly needed a cash injection to fully take advantage of the opportunity.
And as the following Bloomberg article from mid-May describes, this move into foreign equities by the PIF is actually a relatively new phenomena for the $320 (now $360?) billion sovereign wealth fund. Five years ago it was holding company for government stakes in domestic businesses. But its mandate was broadened in 2015 by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to include international investments to support economic diversification and today it’s holding $10 billion in US equities alone including a $2 billion stake in Uber:
“The fund also amassed shares of Canadian oil sands players Suncor Energy Inc. and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., on top of investments that previously emerged in Equinor ASA, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Total SA and Eni SpA. The regulatory filing disclosed the fund held almost $10 billion of U.S. equities, including an approximately $2 billion position in Uber Technologies Inc.”
$10 billion in US equity holdings out of a $320 billion fund that was only acquired in the last five years after Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman changed the fund’s mandate to include international investments. So it sounds like that $10 billion is just the beginning of a longer-term agenda of turning the PIF into a global investment firm. In other words, we should probably expect that $10 billion to grow pretty substantially in coming years, especially since the PIF will clearly have plenty of cash on hand for these COVID-induced buying opportunities. If the cash runs low while buying opportunities still abound the Saudi central bank can just hand over some more cash.
Finally, here’s a Reuters article from the end of March about the heavy selling of stocks by sovereign wealth funds that month that gives us a sense of size of the role sovereign wealth funds play in global equity markets: with over $8 trillion in net holdings, sovereign wealth funds hold around 5–10 percent of global stocks. Sovereign wealth funds were estimated to have experienced around $1 trillion in equity losses from the coronavirus-induced downturn. So that’s going be interesting to see how that share of global stock holdings by sovereign wealth funds rises or falls as the coronavirus economic shock continues to play out.
As the article describes, sovereign wealth funds from oil-producing nations (excluding Norway) had actually been rapidly selling stocks in the last weeks of March, $100–150 billion in total, in response to the collapse in both the markets and oil prices. These oil-state sovereign wealth funds are also mandated to keep large cash reserves on hand as a potential reserve for their governments to draw upon in the case of a drop in oil prices so if there’s a fall in the stock markets that coincides with a drop in oil prices there’s going to be extra selling pressure from for the sovereign funds...at least until a bottom is reach at which point the funds will have plenty of cash on hand to repurchase the sold shares. It points to the powerful role sovereign funds play in global stock markets that’s going to be worth keeping in mind as the pandemic plays out: they have stock positions large enough to trigger a market sell off and cash reserves large enough to swoop in and pick up the pieces:
“The rapid spread of the virus has ravaged the global economy, sending markets into a tailspin and costing both oil and non-oil based sovereign wealth funds around $1 trillion in equity losses, according to JPMorgan strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou.”
Around a $1 trillion in equity losses for the globe’s sovereign wealth funds by the end of March. Losses that coincided with substantial equity selloffs by the funds that were effectively mandated by the coronavirus-induced drop in oil prices. But with over $8 trillion in assets held by these funds and large mandatory cash reserves there’s going to be plenty of cash available to buy up cheap stocks:
So with sovereign wealth funds accounting for roughly 5–10 percent of total global equity holdings going into this crisis it’s going to be quite interesting to see what their total percent of holdings is at the end up it. Especially since, as we saw with Saudi Arabia’s PIF, there’s cash injections from central banks potentially available to take advantage of historic buying opportunities.
Still, a sovereign wealth fund is at least ostensibly operated for the benefit of the citizens of a nation and that makes these large concentrations of wealth poised to get even more concentrated a lot less concerning than the privately owned massive investment funds that are also poised to benefit the most from this crisis. Or at least it would be less concerning if countries like Saudi Arabia weren’t basically privately owned by royal families nations. And that’s what makes the possible market manipulation gains by these Gulf monarchy-owned funds extra concerning: these massive funds that represent the continued ability of royal families to basically own a nation are the same entities perhaps best positioned to come out bigger than ever at the end of this if they play their cards right. It’s never a pretty picture when the hyper-concentration of wealth compounds itself.
And there it is: Minutes after the US Bureau of Economic Analysis announced a record-breaking drop of 32.9% for the GDP in the second quarter, another record was broken. For the first time ever a sitting president suggested he might postpone the election, citing calls for the widespread use of mail-in voting to deal with the pandemic this year and his fantasy fears of massive mail-in vote fraud:
And as the following piece notes, this tweet also happened to follow the congressional testimony of Attorney General Bill Barr two days ago during which Barr refused to plainly state that the president doesn’t actually have the constitutional power to change the date of the election (which is set by congress). Instead, Barr said he hadn’t ever thought about it before and would look into it. This is two months after Barr made a strange warning about foreign governments interfering with mail-in votes elections. And then there’s the fact that Jared Kushner floated the possibility during an interview back in May of Trump deciding himself to postpone the election due to the pandemic. So this tweet that’s unprecedented for a sitting president actually has quite a bit of precedent in terms of signals being sent from Trump’s team that they’re seriously planning on postponing the election:
“The United States had just hit 150,000 deaths — a toll Trump predicted the country might never see — and large states were still setting records for coronavirus cases, as Trump leaned hard into conspiracy theories about how to end the crisis. Minutes before his tweet, the government released data that showed the U.S. economy had shrunk this quarter at its fastest rate because of the virus.”
The worse Trump’s reelection prospects get the greater the chances he tries to pull some sort of stunt like this. That’s the picture that’s emerging but it won’t just be Trump pulling the stunt. His inner circle is clearly on board including the most important person in that circle Attorney General Bill Barr:
It’s also worth keeping in mind that while the Trump team may be testing the waters about the feasible of such a scheme with all of these public trial balloons about postponing the election, it’s also possible this is actually intended to set up a sort of Plan B cheating scenario to be used in case some sort of Plan A cheating scheme doesn’t work. Like, say, first try to hack the electronic voting machines wherever possible and if that doesn’t work float rapidly declare the election results cancelled and then declare the election ‘postponed’ with the ‘real’ election to be be held at a later date. In other words, if we don’t see Trump try to pull this postponement stunt before election day we shouldn’t assume they still aren’t planning on it.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that a major reason the Trump team is so opposed to mail-in voting is that it potentially robs them of the ability to use all their electronic voting machine backdoors on all those mailed-in votes. It raises an interesting offer Congress to could make to the president: since federal law determines the date of elections, if Democrats in Congress offered to have the election postponed for, say, a month in order to give every state time and resources to set up safe procedures for completely getting rid of electronic voting machines and replacing them with hand-marked paper ballots that are to be counted by hand — the way most elections for done for the entire history of the US before the 2000 Florida ‘chad’ debacle led Congress to push electronic voting machines on states — would Republicans take the offer?
Finally, don’t forget that if an out of control pandemic is the excuse the Trump team is planning on using to postpone the election that also implies the Trump team is planning on having a raging out of control pandemic on election day. And for as long as possible after that.
With the 2020 US election fast approach and mail-in voting likely to play a major role during the pandemic, the question of how the US postal system (USPS) will prepare for this surge in mail volume is only growing more urgent. So of course that urgency is only growing now that we’re seeing the Trump-appointed new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, initiative his plan for the post system. A plan to sabotage the postal system and bring it to a grinding halt right in time for the election. And eventually privatize it, although that’s more long-term.
And as we’ll see, it’s a remarkably comprehensive sabotage plan, done under the auspices of a general USPS overhaul. Yep, the Trump administration decided that now, right before a pandemic election when mail-in voting is going to play a crucial role, to enact a major USPS systemic overhaul. An overhaul that, again, appears to be designed to actually sabotage the operations of the post office. For starters, a large amount of institutional knowledge was just tossed away after 23 experienced officials were either displaced or transferred to new positions. In addition, a hiring freeze has been implemented and postal workers are banned from working overtime or making extra trips to finish delivering the mail. So the big Trump overhaul of the USPS appears to be focused on curtailing its capacity, just in time for the election.
As we’ll see in the second article below, there’s another major aspect of this overhaul: the USPS just took out a loan from the Treasury Department. And as part of the terms of the loan the Treasury department is getting access to a large amount of information on internal workings of the USPS. Keep in mind that these are major revenue sources for the the USPS and therefore information about those contracts is exactly the kinds of information we would expect those interested in privatizing the USPS would be keen on obtaining. And since the Republican Party has long called from the privatization of the USPS there are growing concerns that the Trump administration is planning on using this crisis to finally break the USPS and privatize it like the GOP has wanted to do for years. The fact the new new Post Master General who is implementing all of these reforms, Louis DeJoy, is a long-time Republican mega-donor AND someone with major investments in the mail processing private contractor XPO Logistics hasn’t helped to assuage those concerns. Especially after DeJoy refused to divest from those holdings despite obvious conflict-of-interest concerns.
And that’s all why it’s important to keep in mind that the GOP’s 2020 mail-in vote sabotage scheme is probably going to double as a further attempt to privatize the postal system. Ok, first, here’s an article about the growing alarm around Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s sweeping organizational overhaul that was just announced last week. Growing alarm over the fact that the ‘overhaul’ literally appears to be a sweeping sabotage of the post office’s ability to deal with an increase in volume just in time for mail-in voting:
“Twenty-three postal executives were reassigned or displaced, the new organizational chart shows. Analysts say the structure centralizes power around DeJoy, a former logistics executive and major ally of President Trump, and de-emphasizes decades of institutional postal knowledge. All told, 33 staffers included in the old postal hierarchy either kept their jobs or were reassigned in the restructuring, with five more staffers joining the leadership from other roles.”
A leadership overhaul that centralized power around the Louis DeJoy, the major Trump donor who just got the position back in May, while the experienced employees who had been in leadership positions get shuffled around. And then there’s the moves to freeze hiring and prevent overtime. It really is very direct sabotage right out in the open months before a pandemic election when mail-in voting will play a crucial role:
And what is the justification for this ‘reform’? DeJoy keeps referring to the USPS as ‘our business ’ so the justification is presumably that these moves are intended to help the USPS make a profit (it’s not actually a for-profit agency). But it’s hard to ignore the reality that DeJoy has major holding in private mail delivery companies that are direct competitors with the USPS, making him someone who would benefit massively from a sabotaged USPS. And yet he refused to divest from those holdings before taking this job:
Finally, there’s the conditions of the $10 billion loan the Treasure Department made to the USPS. And as part of the loan conditions the USPS has to hand over to the Treasure department information on proprietary contracts for its 10 largest service agreements with private sector shippers. So the Treasury Department is now in possession of information on exactly the kind of contracts the USPS private competitors would prefer go to them instead, giving the Trump administration key information and leverage is needs to force the USPS to drop those contracts and hand them over to private for-profit competitors:
And now here’s more information on the nature of that Treasury Department loan to the USPS and the disturbing terms of the loan that effectively inserts the Treasury Department into the operations of the USPS. In other words, while part of the Trump administration’s sabotage of the USPS has involved placing a crony like Louis DeJoy in the position of Postmaster General, getting the Treasury inserted into the USPS’s operations represents another clear opportunity for sabotage. Especially the kind of long-term sabotage that could effectively privatize the service:
““Undermining and degrading the Postal Service helps frustrate the customer, which sets the stage to privatizing it,” Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, told The Intercept. “The Trump administration is on record for raising prices, reducing service, and reducing workers’ rights and benefits.””
Raise prices while reducing service and worker pay, setting it up for privatization. Again, that’s the long-term GOP agenda for the USPS. A long-term agenda that’s on the cusp of succeeding. All Trump needs to do to succeed with that agenda is to utterly cripple the post office’s operations in time for this election. That’s clearly the plan:
And yet it’s a sabotage plan that also clearly draws immense attention to the sabotage. That’s part of what makes this scheme such a gamble for Trump and the GOP. It’s not hard to imagine that quietly sabotaging the USPS in ways that reduce the quality of its service would lead to a drop off in public support for the system. The Republicans have been doing that for years now with little public notice. But openly sabotaging the USPS right before an election in the middle of a pandemic when mail-in voting is seen as a public health necessity is kind of a huge risk in terms of what impact its going to have on public’s support for the postal system. After all, the last thing the Republicans pushing for the privatization of the postal system are going to want to see is public funding for the postal system becoming a significant political issue but it’s hard to see how openly and aggressively sabotaging the postal system in the middle of pandemic in order to win an election by clogging the system and ruining the election isn’t going to turn this into a political issue.
Of course, if sabotaging the vote is being done with the intent of creating an election emergency so Trump can hold onto power no matter what then it’s not really going to matter what the public’s attitude towards the USPS is since the public’s attitude about any topic won’t really matter at that point. And that’s perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this whole mail sabotage story: it’s a sign that the GOP isn’t just planning on stealing this election. It’s planning on openly and aggressively stealing this election and not even bothering to try to hide it.
President Trump’s ability to toy with the media via strategic trolling has long been one of the more disturbing features of the Trump presidency. Especially when Trump comes out and openly says something highly controversial that occupies the media coverage for several days right when there’s often an even more controversial Trump story emerging that gets ignored. So whenever Trump comes out and says something wildly controversial or downright insane we are forced to ask ourselves whether or not this was another accidental Trumpian moment where he says the quiet part out loud or if this was an intentional distraction.
That’s part of the context — strategic trolling deployed by someone who seems genuinely mentally ill — we are forced to consider when assessing Trump’s latest seemingly spontaneous insane outburst that has now, understandably, capture the media’s attention: Trump just said the quiet part out loud again. This time it’s about his administration’s ongoing sabotaging of the US postal system that coincides with his scaremongering over mail-in voting during the upcoming 2020 election.
As we’ve seen, Trump has been preemptively warning about massive mail-in voter fraud for months, seemingly in anticipation of locking up the election results in courts after the election in a bid to declare the results invalid and hold onto office. At the same time, the new Postmaster General — major Trump donor Louis DeJoy — has enacted an overhaul of the US postal system that is already leading to major delays in the mail and is seemingly designed to ensure mail-in votes can’t be handled by the post office in time.
So this sabotage of the postal system is already basically happening in plain site, with only our collective delusions obscuring what’s happening. Still, one wouldn’t expect Trump to come out and openly say he’s sabotaging the postal system in order to block the ability of mail-in voting to take place. And yet that’s exactly what he did during an interview on Fox Business Network Thursday morning.
But it’s worse than admitting that his administration is actively sabotaging the postal system in order to block the ability of states to carry out mail-in voting. He actually admitted to supporting the ongoing blocking of the current COVID relief bill that’s being negotiated in Congress because that relief bill contains $3.5 billion additional funds for the postal system intended to provide the additional resources required to handle a surge of mail-in voting in the coming months. So Trump came out in support of sabotaging the broader COVID relief bill in order to sabotage the postal system and upcoming election. Specifically, Trump told Fox Business, “The items are the post office and the $3.5 billion for mail-in voting...If we don’t make the deal, that means they can’t have the money, that means they can’t have universal mail-in voting.”
So we have to ask, was this an intentional statement made by Trump? Does he want the wall-to-wall coverage about how the president is sabotaging the postal system? Is there a story that’s somehow even more controversial that’s being missed at this moment because of these statements by Trump? Or is this another indication that the guy isn’t all ‘there’? These are the awful questions we’re forced to ask.
Ok, first, here’s an article from Wednesday, just a day before this interview, about how the postal worker union is now warning that the by systemic overhaul implemented by Trump’s new Postmaster General — changes like forcing delivery workers to leave in the morning whether or not their trucks are loaded yet — is already leading to not only significant delays but higher costs too because the changes are making the operations so inefficient it’s actually taking more man-hours to deliver the mail. Keep in mind that the ostensible justification for the overhaul is cutting costs:
“The reorganization, introduced in July, has resulted in thousands of delayed letters in southern Maine, as delivery drivers follow a new directive to leave on time, even if the mail has not been loaded, said Scott Adams, who represents about 550 workers as the president of American Postal Worker Union Local 458.”
Sending the delivery trucks on ‘on time’ even when they are loaded. That’s the nature of this ‘pro-efficiency reform’ plan. A plan that broke the functioning of the post office so thoroughly that it isn’t actually saving money:
So that’s what we were hearing from the postal worker union officials on Wednesday. And then the next morning Trump gives the interview where he appears to brag about how the failure of the COVID relief bill is going to starve the post office of funds and prevent universal mail-in voting in November:
““The items are the post office and the $3.5 billion for mail-in voting,” Trump told Fox Business Network, saying Democrats want to give the post office $25 billion. “If we don’t make the deal, that means they can’t have the money, that means they can’t have universal mail-in voting.””
If you’re an American hoping for another round of coronavirus relief funds don’t hold your breath as that could be lethal. Perhaps not as lethal as forcing millions of immunologically vulnerable voters to the polls during a pandemic but still lethal. And note how the money for the post office is just a tiny fraction of what Congress is talking about for the broader multi-trillion dollar relief bill. And in response to the outcry over the comments by Trump, the White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany doubled down on that sentiment by stating that the administration opposed any additional funding for election security in a coronavirus relief bill:
It’s always nice when malefactors connect the dots for you. But it’s still disturbing when they do it. It’s like the point in a movie where the villain just can’t resist explaining their diabolical plan. And now we’re forced to ask: was this a premeditate calculated admission or just another ‘is he suffering from dementia?’ Trumpian moment? Keep in mind that, while the whole world now gets to hear about this plan to sabotage the election, that includes one very important group if such a plan to succeed: Republican voters and the larger Republican establishment. And so far we haven’t heard any meaningful outcry from them at all. It’s basically a non-story on the right-wing media today and likely will remain that way through the election.
And that’s another part of what makes this story so disturbing: the plan has been now unambiguously revealed and it appears to have been received with the wholehearted approval of the broader GOP. In other words, it’s not just Trump’s plan anymore. The whole GOP is now behind this which, tragically, makes it more likely to succeed. Don’t forget that a plan to sabotage the election to help Trump win will also help the rest of the Republicans up for election win their races too. Breaking democracy is a lot easier with the approval of a large chunk of the electorate and one of the major party’s, after all, and as of now Trump’s plan and received that approval.
A number of questions remain about what’s going to be in the next US coronavirus relief package, including when it’s actually going to be passed, now that the Senate has left DC until September while congressional negotiations over the bill remain stalled, with Democrats demanding more relief funds and Republicans refusing. And since the upcoming coronavirus relief bill was the likeliest path towards injecting emergency money into the US postal system to get ready for nationwide mail-in voting for the November 2020 election, the stalling of the coronavirus relief bill also means the stalling of the postal system’s ability to prepare for a pandemic election.
Of course, now that President Trump has openly stated that he opposes any emergency funding for the postal system and is happy at the prospect of the postal system never receiving those emergency funds because it will prevent states from enacting universal mail-in voting, the question of whether or not the postal system is going to have the basic capacity to handle the mail — ballots and all other mail, like mailed medicines — is a very real and serious question for the US over the next few months.
So with all that in mind, here’s a pair of articles from back in April that basically foreshadow exactly what we’re seeing play out today. As we’ll see, we already had Trump openly talking about withholding funds from the post office in order thwart the ability of states to carry out mail-in votes during the election and commentators writing columns and warning about this back in April:
“Trump reportedly gave orders to his dutiful Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin — he’d veto a relief package that had so much as one dime for the postal service. Indeed, the most recent relief bill, which contained $2 trillion,including bailouts for a variety of private firms, had no direct aid for the USPS, although lawmakers did squeeze in a $10 billion loan to be paid back (and which Mnuchin still needs to sign off on.) Even though Postmaster General Megan Brennan has asked anew for an $89 billion package of both direct aid and loans (a bit high, yes, but that’s how one starts a negotiation), there’s little sign that Trump intransigence will let up for a fourth bailout bill that may not even come at all, with Democrats and the GOP very far apart.”
Yep, we were already getting reports that Trump was threatening to veto any coronavirus relief packages that had so much as one dime for the postal service back in April. Not one dime. As Trump openly warned at the end of March, when Democrats were already warning about the possible need for universal mail-in voting this year, if the mail-in voting was ever to happen “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” So sabotaging the post office has been a key part of the Trump reelection strategy since at least back in March:
And as the article notes, the sabotage of the postal system isn’t just threatening to disrupt the November elections. It also threatens the 2020 census which also relied heavily on the mail:
And now here’s another article from April about Trump’s threats to veto any coronavirus aid package if any money was to be directed at the post office. As the article describes, it was that veto threat that forced congress to instead issue that $10 billion loan to the post office intended to keep the postal system’s finances steady through the Spring of 2020. So that loan has already basically run its course which is why there are calls for further funds. Recall how the conditions of that loan forced the Post Office to hand over to the Treasury Department valuable information about exactly the types of lucrative contracts the postal system has with private companies like Amazon that Republicans have been trying to get privatized for years. Also recall how the new Postmaster General Trump appoint in July — GOP mega-donor Louis DeJoy — is a major investor in exactly the types of companies that are competing for those types of contracts. So Trump’s veto threat forced a loan with loan conditions that make it easier for the Trump administration to devise strategies to sabotage the postal system and move those private contracts toward the Postmaster General’s private companies.
The article also notes that then-Postmaster General, Megan Brennan, who had been appointed by President Obama in 2015, was requesting another $50 billion — $25 billion to offset lost revenue from declining mail volume due to the coronavirus and $25 billion for “modernization” — plus another $25 billion Treasury loan and a mechanism to pay down $14 billion in existing public debt. That’s how much a non-Trump-crony Postmaster General was requesting back in April: $50 billion in funds plus another $25 billion loan. And instead it got a $10 billion loan with alarming conditions attached:
““We told them very clearly that the president was not going to sign the bill if [money for the Postal Service] was in it,” the Trump administration official said. “I don’t know if we used the v‑bomb, but the president was not going to sign it, and we told them that.””
As we can see, the Trump administration wasn’t shy about their sabotage. They were openly declaring that Trump will veto any coronavirus relief bill with any money at all for the postal system. And this was right after Trump ominous warned that if mail-in voting was actually allowed, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” As a result, the postal system got that $10 billion loan — with those disturbing conditions attached — instead, which was only intended to shore up the system through the spring of 2020. Congress had wanted to just grant the postal system $13 billion but as Steve Mnuchin put it, “You can have a loan, or you can have nothing at all,” and any grants would result in a Trump veto:
Now compare that $10 billion loan to what the non-crony Postmaster General Megan Brennan was requesting: $50 billion in grants and another $25 billion in loans:
Finally, note the nature of the schemes right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation have in mind for the postal system: force it to act more like a corporation, like getting rid of requirements that it deliver to remote addresses. So the rural poor that represent a large chunk of the Republican base would basically lose meaningful access to the postal system:
Also note the Heritage Foundation’s proposed elimination of the prepaid pension requirement would be the elimination of one of the requirements the Republican-led congress imposed on the postal system in 2006 when it forced the system to finance pensions up to 75 years into the future. Which happened to be the move that has thrown the postal system’s finances into chaos ever since:
That’s how grossly cynical the right-wing scheming around the Postal System has long been: impose outrageous requirements that throw the system into financial chaos. Then use that chaos to demand that the system behave more like a regular corporation by getting rid of those pension obligations (and also getting rid of things like universal delivery coverage of remote addresses).
Finally, it’s worth recalling one of the other diabolical schemes emanating from the Trump team around this time in March and April that directly relates to the Postal System sabotage: the plan by Jared Kushner to encourage the spread of the virus under the theory that they could blame Democratic governors and use the pandemic to their electoral advantage. A plan that was actually Plan B. Plan A was apparently a real plan to use the federal government to help coordinate the state responses to the pandemic and ensure limited resources were effectively shared. There was a real plan and all indications were that Trump would announce it in early April. But then Trump reportedly got worried about his reelection prospects and Jared Kushner figured the pandemic might hit Democrat-run states harder and suddenly that Plan A went up in smoke, leaving only Plan B, the plan to let each state to fend for itself. So right around the time we first heard the Trump team openly talk about sabotaging the Postal System for electoral gains in late March and early April is the same time Jared Kushner’s federal plan to coordinate a coronavirus response suddenly disappeared:
“The plan crafted at the White House, then, set out to connect the dots. Some of those who worked on the plan were told that it would be presented to President Trump and likely announced in the Rose Garden in early April. “I was beyond optimistic,” said one participant. “My understanding was that the final document would make its way to the president over that weekend” and would result in a “significant announcement.””
Early April was supposed to be the start of the federal coordinated coronavirus response. They were all ready to go. The plan was in place. And then it wasn’t:
And as we saw in the previous two articles, all of this was happening at exactly the same time the Trump team seemed to suddenly discover that sabotaging the Postal System might help him get reelected. Late March and early April. The exact same two to three week period.
So as this Postal Sabotage democracy nightmare plays out, it’s going to be important to keep in mind that the Trump team was already openly threatening to sabotage the Postal System back in late March and early April. Which just happens to coincide with the period when the Trump team apparently decided to just let the pandemic run wild. At least run wild in Blue states. Yes, the pandemic hasn’t been limited to the Blue states so that part of their plan obviously hasn’t worked out. The electoral sabotage part, on the other hand, appears to be going exactly as planned.
The growing alarm over the Trump administration’s open sabotage of the US Postal System in anticipation of the 2020 US election grew some more today thanks to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s disturbing congressional testimony on Friday. A testimony that include DeJoy declaring that the more than 600 sorting machines that were removed from service under his orders — many in key swing states — will not be returned to service before the election. And while DeJoy did announce earlier this week that he was halting further implementation of the planned removal of these sorting machines, it’s also the case that 90 percent of the planned removals had already taken place. So 90 percent of the sorting machines that were slated for removal as part of a scheme clearly intended to sabotage the upcoming mail-in vote aren’t going to be available for the election. Mission 90 percent Accomplished!:
“Many of the machines have been removed in critical swing states: 59 in Florida, 58 in Texas, 34 in Ohio, 30 in Pennsylvania, 26 in Michigan, 15 in North Carolina, 12 in Virginia, 12 in Wisconsin, and 11 in Georgia. (This data was provided to Mother Jones by Jacob Bogage and Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post, who have detailed removal of the machines.)”
59+58+34+30+26+15+12+12+11=257 out of the 600+ sorting machines slated for removal. That’s over 40% of them in these 9 key swing states. What a coincidence. And they aren’t coming back before the fall. So DeJoy’s sabotage plan is a fait accompli. That was his message to Congress on Friday.
Except, of course, as we’ve seen, this wasn’t really DeJoy’s plan. Trump himself was openly threatening to veto any financial assistance for the Post Office and railing against mail-in voting during the pandemic back in April. Recall how the Trump administration’s adoption of this anti-mail-in voting stance in April happened to come shortly after Jared Kushner apparent had an epiphany in late March that if the federal government neglected to issue a nationally coordinated response to the pandemic and instead just let it run wild the coronavirus was likely hit Democratic-run states with large urban centers the hardest and this could become a political cudgel used by Trump and the Republicans in the upcoming election.
So it’s also worth noting that an internal USPS document has been obtained by Vice outlining this exact sabotage policy of removing sorting machines. The document, entitled “Equipment Reduction,” is from in May, before DeJoy became Postmaster General. As the document makes clear, the sorting machines weren’t to be simply move around to other parts of the country. The plan was to take them out of service entirely and it pre-dated DeJoy’s term.
In addition. And as multiple sources within the Postal Service have told Vice, they have personally witnessed these machines being destroyed or thrown in the dumpster. It’s a reminder that one of the reasons DeJoy couldn’t pledge to return the removed sorting machines to service is because they probably already destroyed them:
“One of the documents also suggests these changes were in the works before Louis DeJoy, a top Trump donor and Republican fundraiser, became postmaster general, because it is dated May 15, a month before DeJoy assumed office and only nine days after the Board of Governors announced his selection.”
It’s another significant data point on this 2020 election sabotage nightmare timeline: After learning about the late March epiphany by Jared Kushner that the pandemic could become a political tool if it’s allowed to rage out of control and the early April pledges by Trump to veto any meaningful financial assistance for the Post Office, we are now learning these sorting machine sabotage plans were already in the works by May, before DeJoy became Postmaster General and days after he was selected for the position. So the earliest known versions of this sabotage plan were circulating inside the USPS days after it was known DeJoy was going to be the next Postmaster General, which raises the question of what role DeJoy may have informally played in developing the plan before he was formally Postmaster General. And since this sabotage plan is basically sabotage out in the open it also raises the question of the extent to which DeJoy — someone notoriously unqualified for the job at the time — was essentially selected specifically for his willingness to be the public face of this open sabotage of the upcoming election. Given his disturbing congressional testimony it would appear he was the right man for the job.
As many commentators have noted in light of the fire and brimstone-style 2020 Republican National Convention — where one speaker after another warns the audience that far left radicals will burn down every town in America — it appears to be focused delivering as much ‘red meat’ to the Trump base as possible without the traditional outreach to swing voters of past conventions. And while such tactics would be eyebrow-raising in past elections, having a campaign that is almost entirely devoted to communicating to an increasingly radicalized base during a year when the president is openly preemptively trying to discredit and sabotage the vote is the kind of tactic that should raise the question of whether or not the Trump team is intending on using the RNC convention to essentially send a message to the hard core base that they should be preparing to carrying some sort of insurrection/coup following the election.
And then we get this story: one of the scheduled Tuesday night speakers, Mary Ann Mendoza, had her slot cancelled after it was discovered by the Daily Beast that she had been promoting on twitter a thread that was explicitly and aggressively promoting both QAnon and classic ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ Jewish blood libel memes. But this wasn’t some old tweet from years ago. She had tweeted this out hours earlier in the day. So on the day Mendoza, who is a member of the Trump campaign’s advisory board, was slated to speak she decided to direct her 40,000 twitter followers to a virulent hard core class Nazi meme and it was only after the Daily Beast pointed this out that the RNC removed her speaking slot.
After the Daily Beast contacted Mendoza about the tweet she claimed it didn’t represent her views at all and that she hadn’t actually read ithe entire thread and wasn’t aware of its content. Keep in mind that the tweet explicitly told people to “Do yourself a favor and read this thread.”
Oh, but there’s more! We also learned on Tuesday that Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon congressional candidate who recently won her Georgia primary and one of a growing number of Republican QAnon candidates this year, was invited by President Trump to attend his keynote convention speech on Thursday night at the White House. Don’t forget that QAnon is a movement that portrays Trump as the savior of humanity in a battle against Satanic liberal elites who traffic and prey on children, and that happens to basically be a modern rehashing of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion where “the Jews!” get replaced by “the Democrats!”. So on the same day the RNC had to pull a speaker for promoting the classic Protocols of the Elders of Zion hours before her scheduled speech we also had President Trump invite one of leading advocates of modern update of the Protocols invited to Trump’s convention keynote speech:
“Hours earlier, Mendoza had linked to a lengthy thread from a QAnon conspiracy theorist that laid out a fevered, anti-Semitic view of the world. In its telling, the Rothschilds—a famous Jewish banking family from Germany—created a plot to terrorize non-Jewish “goyim,” with purported details of their scheme that included plans to “make the goyim destroy each other” and “rob the goyim of their landed properties.””
Just hours before her speech Mendoza decides to tweet this out. The timing sure is interesting!
And, of course, we have to note that Mendoza’s tweet was far from the only allusion to QAnon from a convention speaker. Rebecca Friedrichs, a virulent opponent of teachers unions, charged during her speech that public schools use their curricula to “groom” child for sexual predators like Jeffrey Epstein. It’s an example of how current right-wing memes aren’t just depicting Democratic ‘elites’ as Satanic pedophiles. Liberals in general are being portrayed as secret Satanic pedophiles which is exactly the kind of widespread dehumanization propaganda we should expect from a political movement that appears to be preparing for some sort of armed takeover and mass murder of liberals if Trump loses the election:
And then there’s the other Republican National Convention story from Tuesday about the party’s embrace of QAnon and its rehashing of classic ‘Protocols’ propaganda: Marjorie Taylor Greene gleefully announced she got an invite from President Trump:
““I don’t know much about the movement, other than I understand they like me very much. Which I appreciate. But I don’t know much about the movement,” Trump said last week at a press conference, adding that they “love our country.””
The far right cult that views Trump as the savior who will mass arrest Satanic pedophile Democrats are the people that “love out country” and that’s all Trump claims to know about them. It’s the same ‘playing dumb’ wink & nod approach Trump has been employing the whole time. No matter how many times Trump gets asked about QAnon and is told about their beliefs during press conferences he always acts like he just heard about them and they love it. They’re all in on the joke. A joke that doubles as a wink & nod call to prepare for the mass arrest and murder of Democrats if Trump loses the election (and eventually too, if he wins).
Given the timing of these two last-minute convention announcements it raises the question: so did Trump invite a QAnon candidate like Greene specifically because they realized Mendoza was going to have to be pulled? It’s clear that Trump is increasingly interested in cultivating a sense of militant loyalty from his base and utilizing their violently warped zealousness to stay in office. He’s not even hiding it. So it would make sense that the White House would be particularly sensitive about the feelings of his QAnon followers once it become clear that Mendoza was had to be dropped.
Either way, it’s all a reminder that QAnon is by no means some isolated phenomena but instead a particularly stupid version of the Alex Jones-style far right conspiracy theory that has been steadily taking over the conservative American culture for years now and that Alex Jones-style worldview is itself just a modern adaptation of classic far right ‘the Jews!’ conspiracy theory worldview. Although, in fairness, it’s not like all Republican politicians and leaders are supporting QAnon. Forbes recently had an article listing the Republicans who have come out against it: Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R‑Ill.), Sen. Ben Sasse (R‑Neb.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R‑Calif.), Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), Rep. Denver Riggleman (R‑Va.), Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, and Jeb Bush. That was their entire list. The rest of party is presumably just fine with it, or at least unwilling to publicly voice any opposition to the movement...which might make sense given that the QAnon is clearly being prepped by the White House to act as the new Brown Shirts who will mass arrest and/or kill its opponents. Now may not be the time Republicans want to get on QAnon’s bad side, especially given the contents of this week’s convention.
The Daily Beast had a piece on a series of simulations carried out by Democratic-affiliated groups on election outcome scenarios in light of the widespread expectations that the Trump administration will do anything to keep Trump in office. And if the simulations are any indication of what to expect, all of those dire predictions of post-election chaos are a near certainty. Of the various scenarios they gamed out only a clear Biden landslide avoid one of the nightmare scenarios. Every other outcome devolved into a struggle with a Trump administration that is willing to employ every dirty trick available.
Another very feasible scenario they gamed out is simply what to do if there’s a repeat of 2000 and 2016, with the Republican losing the popular vote but winning in the electoral college again. It sounds like there’s a big internal debate as to whether or not Biden should concede if that happen and their simulations included the Biden Team encouraging the states of California, Oregon, and Washington to threaten to secede unless Republicans agree to amend the constitution and abandon the electoral college for future election in exchange for Trump’s reelection. So the simulations included the potential breakup of the US.
Worse, the only real effective approach the Democrats could foresee in winning out should Biden not secure a landslide victory is the mass mobilization of protests on the streets and yet one of the dirty trick scenarios the group foresees is Trump invoking the Insurrection Act and calling in the military to ‘restore order’. And yet a clear Biden landslide is also clearly impossible on election night when a large percentage of the vote will be received by mail, especially when the Trump administration is openly sabotaging the postal system for the explicit purpose of slowing down mail-in voting. So if we read between the lines of the simulation results there’s basically no feasible scenario for a normal democratic transition of power for America going forward:
““I wish we were having these conversations six months ago,” said Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University. The co-founder of the Transition Integrity Project, Brooks has conducted war games to play out the range of Election Day and post-Election Day scenarios. And virtually all the outcomes, save one—a Biden landslide—have ended up facilitating a nightmarish fallout.”
The only hope for avoiding a scenario that effectively breaks democracy is a clear cut Biden victory. Anything less than that and we’re in store for one of the many nightmare scenarios. Scenarios that include Trump invoking the Insurrection Act in the face of large-scale street protests:
And then there’s the secession-threat scenario they saw as possible under the highly plausible even that Trump once again loses the popular vote but wins in the electoral college. It raises the grimly fascinating question of how the US conservative movement would respond if California, Washington, and Oregon actually did threaten to secede, something the US right-wing has for decades jokingly advocated. How would a Democratic ultimatum that ‘Cascadia’ will secede unless the Republicans agree to eliminating the electoral college between received? With mild enthusiasm or overwhelming enthusiasm? That’s one of the questions that might be answered later this year:
And only a Biden landslide can prevent these Doomsday-USA scenarios. A landslide that can plausibly manifest on election night because so much of the vote counting will be delayed due to mail-in voting. They found no realistic scenario that can avoid the start of giant national crisis and the only significant response the Democrats can muster will be giant street protests, a scenario that happens to fit nicely into Trump’s current strategy of demonizing the ongoing nationwide police brutality protest movement as some sort of domestic terrorist movement. And that gives us a hint of how this election will likely play out: Trump claims victory on election night (whether he won or not) prompting giant street protests that are subsequently labeled some sort of domestic terror movement and maybe the West Coast will threaten to secede, possibly provided a pretext for some sort of civil war. So it’s basically the far right dream scenario. And all it took to make this far right dream scenario a near certainty was decades of the right-wing media radicalizing US conservatives, culminating in the election of an open aspiring fascist who warned us during his first election that he wouldn’t accept election results if he lost. Imagine that. It’s one of those stories that might make it tempting to pause and reflect on the delicacy of democracy but should instead prompt some serious reflection on how democracies shouldn’t be treated like they’re indestructible playthings.
In what is becoming a right-wing tic, the Insurrection Act was once again in the new over the weekend. Trump himself casually and enthusiastically suggested that he’ll invoke the Insurrection Act on election night if there are large scale protests against a Trump victory. That was his response to a question during an interview on Jeanine Pirro’s show on Fox News about what he would do if there are riots in cities on election night. Trump simply state, “We’ll put them down very quickly if they do that. We have the right to do that, we have the power to do that if we want...Look, it’s called ‘insurrection.’ We just send in and we do it, very easy. I mean, it’s very easy.” So protests on election night will be characterized as ‘riots’ and an ‘insurrection’ that Trump has the power to quickly and easily ‘put down’, a clear allusion to invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. Again. Putting down the Democratic insurrection of Antifa and BLM domestic terrorists is now one of the the central emerging themes of the Trump reelection campaign so we should probably expect a lot more allusions to it the closer we get to election day. Declaring martial law is very ‘on brand’ for Trump, after all.
And let’s not forget the rest of the Republicans who have been openly calling for the invocation of the Insurrection Act against protesters. When Trump was threatening to call in the military to put down protests back at the beginning of June, Senator Tom Cotton wrote that op-ed in the New York Times back in June justifying invoking the Insurrection Act against protesters. And when Trump had protesters aggressively disbursed with tear gas in front of the White House so Trump could walk across the street for a photo-op, Cotton justified the teargassing by declaring that “The only way to end this insurrection is the overwhelming display of force”. Cotton was just named as one of Trump’s potential future Supreme Court picks.
But as we’ll see below, there’s now a new voice calling for Trump to do martial law...but only if he doesn’t win reelection. It’s a particularly ominous voice because it’s a voice that has long had Trump’s ear: Roger Stone, who issue this advice to Trump while he was being interview by Alex Jones on InfoWars. Stone also called for the mass jailing of journalists — specifically saying the entire staff of the Daily Beast should be jailed — and also called for the jailing of public figures like Bill and Hillary Clinton and Apple CEO Tim Cook. Stone then suggested the federal government should seize the ballots of Nevada on election day from state officials under the premise that they will be riddle with fraud and therefore shouldn’t be counted.
And, again, this was during an interview on InfoWars, an outlet that has long laughably branded itself as anti-martial law. InfoWars is now a platform for the advocacy of martial law and mass arrests and its far right audience apparently has no problem with this. If the InfoWars audience has reached a point where they can back martial law without batting an eye the conservative base is ready to engage in some major crimes against humanity. Don’t forget that stoking the US right-wing into committing some major crimes against humanity against the rest of America has long been a major goal of the far right media complex and here we are with the anti-martial law crowd validating a figure like Roger Stone as he calls for martial law.
That’s part of what made Roger Stone’s advise to Trump so ominous. It’s not just who said it but where he said it. The voices in Trump’s head that he actually listens to — Roger Stone and Alex Jones — are telling him to essentially declare Democrats an enemy of the state and he’s clearly receptive to their message because keeps echoing it himself:
“Those seem to be references to the 1807 Insurrection Act, a law that has been used seldomly but allows the commander in chief to deploy troops on US soil in times of crises. Mr Trump floated the idea he would use it to put American military troops in the path of protesters after the killing of George Floyd, a black man, while being choked by the knee of a white police officer.”
He’s floated the idea before and he’ll float it again. Trump is clearly personally enthusiastic about the idea, along with Roger Stone, Alex Jones, and a large and growing portion of the far right base. The long-standing far right goal of whipping up the American conservatives into such a fervor that they’re convinced they need to destroy the country in order to save it has finally arrived:
“Stone said he wants an honest, legal and transparent election in which the real winner takes office – but he ruled out Joe Biden as that real winner and said “force will be met with force” if Mr Trump is not re-elected.”
Joe Biden has already been ruled out as a possible real winner — a growing meme on right-media — and therefore any scenarios that involve Biden winning office will will be met with force. They’ve managed to push the Overton window to “Heads I win, tails I shoot you in the head”.
And now there’s talk of having entire states thrown out of the election due to fabricated claims of mass illegal immigrant fraud. The whole state of Nevada should have its vote canceled:
Canceling the vote of entire states. And since Roger Stone is a guiding light for the far right this is presumably the GOP’s voter suppression efforts are headed. That and all the mass arrests he’s calling for. This must be what pushing the envelope looks when calls for martial law are already in the air:
So this all raises the question: given that insurrection is defined as a violent uprising against an authority or government, and given that Stone and Trump are much of the rest of the right-wing media punditocracy are advocating a violent repression of the normal democratic process, does this all qualify as attempted insurrection?
Here’s a disturbing set of updates on the death of Michael Reinoehl, the “100% ANTIFA” Portland protester who shot and killed a far right Patriot Prayer member days before being gunned down by law enforcement himself. First, recall how Reinoehl was shot and killed in Washington state hours after he gave an interview to Vice News where he admitted to the shooting and Portland but portrayed it as an act of self defense and went on to characterize it as the opening shots of a new civil war. Initial reports from eyewitnesses indicated that when Reinoehl’s killing took place he had pulled an assault rifle out and fired it at officers before they returned fire.
Here’s the update: Following some initial contradictory reporting on whether or not Reinoehl was brandished a gun when he was shot, we are now learning of an eyewitness who has come forward asserting that he saw the shooting and Rinoehl did NOT have a gun. In addition, one of the eye witnesses who was previously reported as claiming he saw Reinhoehl pull out and fire an assault rifle at officers before they returned fire is now saying his initial statements to the press were mischaracterized and that he never actually saw Reinhoehl with an assault rifle. Instead he heard what sounded like a burst of rounds from an assault rifle. Police are also confirming that Reinoehl did not have an assault rifle. Police are continuing to state that he did possess a firearm at the time of this shooting and they are continuing to investigate what role, if any, the firearm may have played in the shooting. In other words, the police are NOT confirming that Reinoehl fired first.
The second update is that President Trump seemed to not just be celebrating Reinoehl’s death but actually taking credit for it. This was during his interview with Jeanine Pirro this weekend when Trump touted the killing, exclaiming, “I put out, ‘When are you going to go get him?’ ...And the U.S. Marshals went in to get him. And, in a short period of time, it ended in a gun fight. This guy was a violent criminal. And the U.S. Marshals killed him...I will tell you something, that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution when you have crime like this.” There has to be retribution so Trump called for police to “get him” and they “got him”. A swift summary execution without a trial.
The third update is more of a bizarre tangential-related story to all this that captures the zeitgeist of the GOP. It’s about long-time Roger Stone ally Michael Caputo. Recall the odd story of Stone and Caputo that came up in the Mueller investigation, where Stone and Caputo both ‘forgot’ about in incident where a Russian man living in America, Henry Greenberg, approached them with offer to sell them stolen emails from the Clinton Foundation. The emails were apparently taken by a Ukrainian who was allegedly a disgruntled former employee of the foundation. But there was a twist: it turns out Greenberg claims to have been an FBI informant from 1996–2013. Plus he has a number of ties to Hollywood. It’s another one of the many unresolved threads from the entire #TrumpRussia fiasco and the kind of story that gives us a sense of Caputo’s fellow travelers.
So why is Caputo in the news now? Well, for starters, he got a new job back in April with the Trump administration. He’s now the assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services despite having no obvious qualification for the position, other than being rapidly loyal to Trump. Then, over the weekend, both Politico then The New York Times ran stories about how Caputo and a top aide had routinely worked to revise, delay or even scuttle the CDC’s core health bulletins of the to paint the administration’s pandemic response in a more positive light. The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports had previously been so thoroughly shielded from political interference that political appointees only saw them just before they were published but that’s clearly changed.
Then, presumably in response to these stories, Caputo created a 26 minute video on Facebook where he ranted about the “deep state” and accused the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) of harboring a “resistance unit” that’s determined to undermine President Trump. Caputo charged that scientists “deep in the bowels of the C.D.C.” walked “around like they are monks” and “holy men” but engaged in “rotten science” and intentionally making the pandemic worse in order to politically harm Trump.
Caputo also predicts during the video that Trump will win re-election in November but he goes on to predict that Joe Biden will refuse to concede which will lead to violence and warns, “when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin...The drills that you’ve seen are nothing.” He goes on to warn that “there are hit squads being trained all over this country” to mount armed opposition to a second term for Mr. Trump and that “You understand that they’re going to have to kill me, and unfortunately, I think that’s where this is going.”
And what is the evidence Caputo cites for this grand violent leftist plot? The shooting by Michael Reinoehl. “Remember the Trump supporter who was shot and killed?” Mr. Caputo said. “That was a drill.” Keep in mind that Caputo went on this rant just days after his long-time associate Roger Stone went on InfoWars and implored President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and refuse to step down if he loses the election.
So at this point the updates on Michael Reinoehl’s case is that it looks like he was killed in an extrajudicial execution that Trump himself is celebrating and taking partial credit for at the same time Reinoehl’s shooting of Patriot Prayer member is being used as a pretext for civil war.
Ok, first, here’s an update on what’s known about Reinoehl’s death: eyewitnesses and police now dispute that he had an assault rifle while one witness claims he had no gun at all:
“In Trump’s interview with Fox’s Jeanine Pirro Saturday, he also called Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler “a disaster, a laughingstock,” claiming that if he sent federal officers back to Portland, “within a half an hour the whole thing would be solved.””
Yes, the interview where Trump celebrated Reinoehl’s death is of course the same interview where he also celebrated the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act against protesters and declaring martial law. At which point extrajudicial retribution killings would presumably be widespread:
And the more we’re learning from eye witnesses of Reinoehl’s killing the more it’s sounding like an extrajudicial killing of a man who wasn’t actively threatening officers and perhaps someone who never even got a chance to surrender:
Keep in mind that one of the mysteries around Reinoehl and his claims of being “100% ANTIFA!” is the questions of how long the guy has actually been political active at all and who may have influenced him because based on his social media postings he had almost no interest in politics until this summer. Questions that are a lot harder to answer now that he’s dead.
And now here’s a piece on Michael Caputo’s 26-minute Facebook rant about the “deep state” conspiracy inside the CDC against Trump. As the article notes, this rant came a day after both Politico and the New York Times published pieces about how Caputo had been directly interfering with the CDC’s coronavirus public reports in order to make the Trump administration’s response look better. So it was a rant presumably rooted in part in a sense of desperation but part of what made it so disturbing is the much broader sense of desperation expressed by Caputo. A sense that the left is plotting mass violence and that he and his family is in danger. And what does Caputo cite as a source of these intense desperate (and certainly fraudulent) fears? Michael Reinoehl’s shooting of the Patriot Prayer member which is describes as “a drill”:
“This weekend, first Politico, then The New York Times and other news media organizations published accounts of how Mr. Caputo and a top aide had routinely worked to revise, delay or even scuttle the core health bulletins of the C.D.C. to paint the administration’s pandemic response in a more positive light. The C.D.C.’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports had previously been so thoroughly shielded from political interference that political appointees only saw them just before they were published.”
What a coincidence. Just after the New York Times and Politico publish pieces on his unprecedented political meddling of the CDC’s pandemic reports, Michael Caputo issue a 26-minute Facebook rant charging a “deep state” conspiracy inside the CDC against him and against Trump. But that conspiracy is just part of a large left-wing conspiracy of armed squads planning on disrupting Trump’s re-election. And this conspiracy has been threatening Caputo and his family. But he let them know that they’re going to have to kill him to stop him. This rant, of course, took place days after Roger Stone goes on InfoWars calling for Trump to declare martial law if he loses re-election:
The evidence for this diabolical left-wing plot to murder Trump supporters? Michael Reinoehl’s shooting of the Patriot Prayer member. That was all just a drill:
It’s worth recalling that Reinoehl himself expressed a sentiment that when he shot that guy in Portland it was the opening shots of new war. It was one of those over-the-top statements that raised questions about Reinoehl’s actual political background. And then we had the Oath Keepers also call the shooting in Portland the first shot a new civil war. Then President Trump got involved by calling for Reinoehl’s apprehension which was quickly followed by a shooting by law enforcement that is looking more and more like an intentional extrajudicial killing. And now Michael Caputo is citing Reinoehl is as evidence of a vast left-wing plot to orchestrate post-election militant squads. It’s all a reminder that a key step in fomenting civil conflict is the fomenting of delusion and madness. Yes, some violence is required too, but just a spark. The delusion and madness will take care of it from there.
With 2020 US election rapidly devolving into a planned legal battle under the weight of the Republican Party’s campaign of election fraud lies, one of the increasingly urgent questions facing the American public is whether or not there’s any possible way of avoiding the Election Day nightmare scenario President Trump continues to warn he will impose. That’s the scenario where Trump declares on Election Day that all the mail-in votes are compromised and that only in-person votes should be counted, setting off a series of legal challenges that end up being decided by a then‑6–3 conservative Supreme Court majority.
And as the following article describes, there is indeed an easy and obvious solution to the problem: allow for the advance-counting of mail-in votes so states election systems can already have a large portion of the mail-in votes counted and ready to announce on Election Day. Sure, there will still be some ballots that have yet to come in after Election Day but at least it won’t be overwhelmingly just in-person vote tallies that are announced.
So are the any obstacles to this obvious and simple solution? Of course there are. Obstacles called Republicans. In particular, the Republican-led state legislatures of three key swing states — Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — are all blocking Democratic proposals to allow for earlier mail-in ballot counting:
“The good news, though, is that there’s a way for states to counter the playbook Trump has already signaled he will follow: Allow elections officials to begin processing absentee ballots early. The Bipartisan Policy Center recommends that states permit at least seven days of processing before Election Day. That merely means opening the outer envelope, sorting the ballots into the correct precinct, verifying the signatures, and preparing them to go through a vote-counting machine. That way, on Election Day, all you need do is put the ballots through the machine to know the results.”
So simple and so obvious: if the supposed problem with mail-in voting is that we won’t know who won on election night because of the logistics of physically processing all of those mail-in votes, just start the process sooner. No harm no foul. Except doing so would ruin Trump’s plans for ruining the election:
And note how these GOP state leaders were initially very open to the idea of moving up the vote counting period. And then President Trump weighed in on the issue and all of a sudden their minds changed:
Yep, they were for it until Trump was against it. Against it and threatening to cut off federal funding to states that do actually make it easier for their constituents to safely vote. So perhaps it’s worth taking a look at this article from June about the proposal in Pennsylvania to move forward the mail-in ballot counting period. Because not only does it include a Republican leader voicing his support for the new rules but this leader, former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, directly addresses President Trump over Trump’s opposition to the rule. As Ridge puts it, “First of all I would say to the president — you have the bully pulpit, you’re the incumbent President of the United States, … you have a massive war chest, you have millions of people who follow you electronically, you’ve got a strong national party … why not maximize all the assets you have to get this huge turnout?”:
“In regards to Trump’s pushback on a mail-in system, Ridge said he finds it counter-intuitive to discourage voting by mail when that could increase Republican turnout for Trump and other incumbent congressmen.”
Yes, as Tom Ridge points out, it is quite counter-intuitive that mail-in voting is somehow a partisan issue. It’s not like Republican voters can’t mail in their votes too. So why not use Trump’s inherent advantage of being a president with the bully pulpit to encourage maximum Republican turn out including mail-in Republican votes? That’s the question Ridge posed to Trump back in June and it remains a question Trump has yet to answer in a serious way. Because he can’t. There are no honest answers he can give. Just likes, bluster and threats like the threat to cut off funding to states that take the necessary steps to avoid the Election Day nightmare Trump is relying on. And it’s all out in the open. Which makes this less a diabolical scheme and more just the electoral equivalent of looting and rioting.
Here’s a story about a foiled plot that was just announced by the FBI today that appears to be some sort of militia-based October Surprise. But even by October Surprise standards this one is surprising:
The FBI just announced the foiling of a plot by a Michigan militia to kidnap Governor Whitmer, take her to a “secure location” in Wisconsin, and hold her on trial for treason. Yep. The cause for the treason charges? Whitmer’s COVID-19 lockdown measures. The group went as far as twice conducting surveillance at Whitmer’s personal vacation home in northern Michigan. They also tested IEDs wrapped in shrapnel anti-personnel land minds and inspected bridges for locations to place explosive charges. The plan was to blow up a bridge, drawing law enforcement to the area, and then kidnap Whitmer with the distraction underway.
Six militia members were arrested by the FBI in connection with the kidnapping attempt. Another seven members of the Michigan Wolverine Watchmen militia were also arrested by state authorities in connection to the kidnapping plot. But it sounds like there’s more actors involved and this is a multi-state plot (which makes sense if they were planning on taking Whitner to Wisconsin). The FBI’s charges against the six individuals include a reference to an unnamed Michigan militia, which is presumably the Michigan Wolverine Watchmen.
Details of timing of the plot and when the investigation started remain sparse. We’re told that the federal investigation started in early 2020 when the FBI learned through social media that individuals were discussing the violent overthrow of several state governments and law enforcement. By March of 2020, the FBI was already tracking the unnamed militia in after local police learned members were trying to obtain addresses of local law-enforcement officers. The source of this tip off was a militia member who learned that the group was planning to target and kill police officers.
In June of this year, two of the six individuals arrested by the FBI — Barry Croft and Adam Fox — held a meeting with 13 others from multiple states in Dublin, Ohio, where they discussed the violent overthrow of state governments and law enforcement. A paid FBI source was at the meeting.
On on August 29, Fox and two other individuals located Whitmer’s home and shot video and took photos of it as they drove by and then calculated how long it would take local and state police to respond to an incident at the property. In September, they carried out a test of an IED wrapped in shrapnel.
At some point, the group later made plans to conduct a final training exercise in late October but then decided that was too close to the November election, so they moved forward with raising money to procure explosives and other supplies including an 800,000-volt taser. So if the final training exercise was in later October but that was too close to the election it sounds like they really were planning on some ‘October Surprise’ intended to take place before the election. Why would the timing matter otherwise?
This is a good time to recall the numerous instances this year when we’ve learned about groups of this nature receiving very high-level support. Back in April we learned about GOP mega-donors financing the anti-COVID-lockdown protests — with heavily armed groups ‑that all suddenly erupted in state capitals across the US, including the Michigan-based DeVos family. We also learned that Robert Mercer’s organization, “Convention of the States”, was suddenly retooled to support these same armed protests. And then, of course, there was President Trump’s declarations over Twitter to “Liberate Michigan!” (and Minnesota and Virginia) that same month. So when we’re talking about a plot to kidnap Governor Whitmmer to overthrow the state government we are talking about a was fulfillment of President Trump’s own orders.
As the following article also notes, the FBI affidavit detailing these arrests comes hours after an FBI shootout with a Metro Detroit man. As we’ll see in the second article excerpt below, that man, Eric Mark-Matthew Allport, was a neighbor of Randy Weaver who apparently became an radicalized and a friend of Weaver’s son. He’s now being hailed by the ‘Boogaloo Bois’ movement as a martyr. We aren’t told if Allport’s shootout with the FBI is related to this larger plot. But given that there’s clearly much more to the larger plot than we are told that seems like a good bet:
“Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, federal and state officers on Thursday detailed charges against more than 12 people and what they described as “elaborate plans” to overthrow the government and kidnap Whitmer.”
It definitely sounds like an elaborate plan. Outlandish but elaborate. And when simply sowing the seeds of chaos in the hopes of turning that chaos into a rallying cry for a civil war is the underlying meta-plan, an outlandish kidnapping plan isn’t necessarily all that outlandish. Chaos would have definitely been sowed had they succeeded and who knows how the right-wing would have actually responded. Would they be hailed as freedom fighters?
And while the federal indictment doesn’t name the Michigan militia involved in the plot, the fact that the state indictment includes the Wolverine Watchmen makes it pretty clear that’s the group the FBI affidavit referred to. Unless there’s another militia involved, which wouldn’t be that surprising:
Crucially, this wasn’t just a plot they were talking about back in early 2020. They held a meeting in June involving 13 people from multiple states where they plotted what amounts to a government overthrow. Then they continued to plot, with surveillance runs of Whitmer’s vacation home and the testing of IEDs:
And the plans included a final training exercise in late October, but they called it off because it was too close to the election. But they didn’t end the plot. They moved forward with raising money for explosives. Why would the timing of the election matter unless this plot was intended to be executed right before Election Day:
Also keep in mind that a plot to kidnap the governor right before election day could be seen as a plot to disrupt the election in general which is entirely in keeping with President Trump’s reelection strategy..
Ok, now here’s a report on the man, Eric Mark-Matthew Allport, killed by the FBI in a shootout in Michigan hours before these arrests were announced. The shootout happened as FBI agents moved to arrest Allport at a restaurant, which raised some eyebrows and raises interesting questions about how soon a larger plot was about to be put in action. And while it’s unclear if the Allport was involved with the larger overthrow plot, he definitely fits the profile as the ‘Boogaloo Bois’ making him into a martyr make clear:
“The shooting, which left an FBI agent wounded, served as a violent end to Allport’s life 28 years after federal agents, including an FBI sharpshooter, shot and killed Allport’s friends and neighbors on a remote mountaintop in Idaho. The deadly Ruby Ridge standoff has served as a rallying cry for white nationalists and inspired the 1995 domestic terror attack by Michigan native Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City.”
Is it just a coincidence that this shootout happened hours before the broader plot is revealed by authorities? It’s hard to imagine that’s the case. So we can reasonably add Eric Mark-Matthew Allport to the list of plotters in this multi-state plot to overthrow the government of Michigan:
But, of course, it’s not just Michigan that was targeted. This is a multi-state plot. So we have to ask, how many other states were targeted? Were we going to see multiple governors all kidnapped or killed on the same day? Right before the election? We don’t know at that point but that’s the direction the evidence is pointing.
What would happen if multiple states experienced armed coups right before, or on, Election Day? Would it have to be postponed? Would Trump declare martial law? These are the kinds of questions we need to be asking, especially since the broader plot might still be ready to go...and also since this thwarted plot just happens to be in keeping with the broader GOP plot to disrupt and delegitimize the election.
The following Daily Mail, UK 12/21/2020 article https://mol.im/a/9074747 reports of another suspicious death by a person falling out of a building in Russia and had a linkage to corona virus vaccine researcher. The article discusses is a pattern of suspicious deaths from buildings involving COVID 19 in Russia. However, the information included in the article would cause one to question if this person has an intelligence background. The article states:
“A top Russian scientist with close links to Edinburgh University who was ‘working on a Covid-19 vaccine’ has been found dead in suspicious circumstances in St Petersburg.”
“Biologist Alexander ‘Sasha’ Kagansky, 45, best known for his work on fighting cancer, was reported to have fallen in his underwear from a 14th floor window of a high rise residential building.”
“He also had a stab wound on his body, according to Moskovsky Komsomolets (MK).”
Also note that the article references a German publication Bild references a friend of the dead doctor (who also is a suspect) to portray Dr, Kagansky as a nut:
“The suspect, who is reportedly a friend of Dr Kaganksy, has claimed that the biologist was in a mentally unstable state before his death and injured himself with a knife, reports Bild.”
“He claimed that Dr Kaganksy jumped from the balcony when he tried to take the weapon from him.” The question to ask is why would Dr. Kagansky pull a gun on his referenced friend? “Police believe there was a ‘scuffle’ before Kagansky fell, according to a report.”
“MK reported that the academic had been ‘developing a vaccine against coronavirus’ and that he died ‘under strange circumstances’.”
“The committee said today a St Petersburg resident, aged 45, had been detained as a suspect, and a criminal case for murder had been opened following the discovery of the body ‘with signs of a violent death’.”
The article also states the following which could indicate some kind of intelligence connections due to the Russian’s involvement in UK related activities including:
“Dr Kagansky — an assistant professor in Vladivostok — had been working in Edinburgh for 13 years until at least 2017.”
“Between 2005 and 2012, Dr Kaganksy worked at the Welcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology, University of Edinburgh, as a postdoctoral research associate then a senior research associate.”
“In 1991 as the USSR collapsed he was the first Russian delegate to the European Youth Parliament. He was also a member of Young Academy of Scotland.
However, he was a cancer researcher and this might be a little unusual to jump to vaccine research although the article referenced his “Genomic and Regenerative” medicine activities.
The article states “He had recently received a Russian grant to study new ways of diagnosing and treating malignant brain tumours, and was an advocate of research into the uses of herbs and mushrooms as a cancer treatment.”.
“He was lately Director of the Centre for Genomic and Regenerative Medicine at Russia’s Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, where he continued research collaboration with the Scottish university.”
“Moskovsky Konsomsolets of the Russian Investigative “reported that the academic had been ‘developing a vaccine against coronavirus’ and that he died ‘under strange circumstances’.”
There a story out the Los Angeles Times about a disturbing plan for dealing with potential protests last year. Disturbing enough to prompt some anonymous sources to leak the plan to the media. And disturbing enough that, now that the plans have been leaked, everyone is denying they knew anything about them:
We’re now learning that the California Coast Guard quietly put in place plans to have F‑15c fighter jets on standby, ready to for use in disbursing protesters by flying extremely low over the crowds in a show a force. The orders were issued in March of 2020 as the coronavirus lockdowns were just getting underway. Further orders to be ready were issued during the height of the George Floyd protests and in the week before the November election.
We know about the orders because four members of the California National Guard confirmed the orders to the LA Times. But it’s not actually clear who issued the orders and at this point no one is coming forward to acknowledge issuing them. And it’s that aspect of the story that might be the most disturbing of all because it also sounds like these disturbing orders weren’t issued through the normal chain-of-command but instead may their way down to the Guard members orally or via text message. So whoever issued these orders knew they were the kind of orders that had to be covered up. And now we’re at the open cover-up phase of this story:
“But then came an unusual order: The air branch of the Guard was told to place an F‑15C fighter jet on an alert status for a possible domestic mission, according to four Guard sources with direct knowledge of the matter.”
We have four Guard sources backing this story up. They can describe the orders they were vaguely given. Orders that were implied to mean the jets should be deployed to terrify protesters. And in the case of two written communications circulated among Guard members, we find references to making a “show of force” or “show of presence” with the jets:
But even with these sources coming forward, we still can’t say who ultimately issued these orders to have these jets on standby because the orders were formal written orders. They were issued orally or in text message:
So we’re left scratching our heads and forced to ask who could have issued these orders. Governor Newsom doesn’t seem like a likely culprit. The Defense Department claims it wasn’t involved. Was this solely the decision of the head of the California Guard, Maj. Gen. David Baldwin? His office is denying it.
So who issued these mystery orders? And perhaps more importantly, how many other mystery orders like this were issued? Was this a California-only secret order or did other state guards receive similar informal orders? We have no idea. But given that we’re talking about secret military orders for quelling domestic protests during the last year of the Trump administration, it’s probably best if we keep looking for these answers.